Violent Emotional Upheaval Inevitably Summons Violent Bust Morphing
Thunder Rock Mountain.
As one might guess from the name alone, it was a hinterland among hinterlands — a place where thunder once poured down like rain, so that even Mythril-class adventurers dared not enter carelessly. Aside from a handful of explorers who treated their own lives like a fly's, civilized folk almost never set foot there.
It was wilderness pure and simple, the kind of land that made anyone who'd tasted even a scrap of civilization wonder whether a human being could possibly survive there.
And yet, astonishingly, there were those who had carved out a home of their own in this place.
They were the Thunder Fire Bear tribe — the very roots of Grihamar, whom Sigrun had set out to find — who called themselves descendants of the thunder-wreathed bear. Civilized people simply called them barbarians.
They said the village's location hadn't changed in ten years. Looks like that was true.
Thunder might have stopped falling, but it would have been strange to abandon overnight a home lived in for hundreds or thousands of years.
After walking a full half-day from Grihamar's battle wild boar production plant(?), Sigrun finally reached the Thunder Fire Bear village. She immediately approached a barbarian who was curing boar hide nearby — not in her knight's armor, but disguised in the adventurer's clothes she had packed separately.
"Excuse me…"
"Hmm? Oh! An adventurer? It's been ages since I've seen an outsider! Things have been pretty noisy with the trolls lately — how'd you make it all the way here alone in one piece? Did you receive the Thunder Bear's blessing or something? Ah! Name's Einar! Just call me Einar!"
"Huh? Ah—ahaha…"
Fortunately her disguise held; the barbarian didn't recognize her.
Sigrun offered an awkward smile to the man who grinned at her so openly without a shred of wariness, then quickly cast her eyes around the barbarian village.
They're… not preparing for war? The village is far too peaceful.
"Catch that one!"
"Run awaaaay~"
"You little brat! You little brat!"
"Just you wait till I catch you for real!"
Barbarian children in clothes made of boar hide were squealing with laughter as they played tag, while the adults cut meat and worked leather as they watched the kids.
The intel said the barbarians seemed to be preparing for war… yet I don't see so much as the first letter of "weapon" anywhere.
For people supposedly preparing for war, the scene was so warmly, heartwarmingly peaceful that a smile almost crept unbidden onto her lips.
Still, Sigrun decided she shouldn't judge everything from this alone. She approached the barbarian who had just been smiling so kindly at her and asked:
"More importantly — trolls? Don't the trolls stay blocked by Thunder Rock Mountain's lightning and never dare threaten Frostheim?"
"That was the old days! It's been ten years already since the Great Warrior was born! Trolls may be rock-heads, but ten years is long enough for them to start sensing the change on Thunder Rock Mountain."
"Ah…!"
Could the sudden boom in battle wild boar numbers have been because of the trolls?
Battle wild boars to protect themselves from the trolls… but even so, the population is still far too large…?
As Sigrun blinked at the completely unexpected names, the barbarian who had introduced himself as Einar spoke after thinking a moment.
"Did our side send someone to the Duchess of Reinhardt to warn her about the trolls? Hey! Ivar! Did we ever send anyone to Her Grace the Duchess?"
"What?! The princess showed up riding a tiger with a duke's tail attached?! You crazy bastard! If you're gonna lie, at least make it halfway believable so I can pretend to fall for it!"
"…Bear with him. That guy took a direct lightning strike from Thunder Rock Mountain during his coming-of-age ceremony, so his hearing's a bit off. But he never misses a call for dinner, so some of us wonder if he's just faking it."
"Ahem… Anyway, I don't really know, but I doubt they know. Neither I nor the people of the territory seem to know anything about trolls…"
"That so? Hmm, then if you wouldn't mind, when you head back this time…"
"Y-yes! I'll make sure to pass it along carefully to Duchess Astrid!"
"Ah! Thanks! As you well know, those civilized folk down below are so full of prejudice against us that approaching them gets pretty delicate."
"Prejudice…"
Perhaps the intelligence that the barbarians were preparing for war with them had also been distorted by that same prejudice.
No — even so, the number of battle wild boars is unreasonably high. Even accounting for trouble with the trolls, there are simply too many.
Seeing the awkward smile on the barbarian's face, Sigrun resolved to be more careful. She cleared her throat lightly and said:
"About the trolls… I had no idea. I came up from down there, and I never even ran into a single troll track, so I didn't know anything like that existed."
"That direction… is where Grihamar lives? Aha! So you already met our Thunder Fire Bear tribe's Great Warrior on the way here! That's why you never ran into any trolls!"
"The Great Warrior… you say?"
I did think that towering frame wasn't any ordinary barbarian… the Great Warrior?
Between that suspicious boar production facility and everything else — just who the hell was that guy?
As Sigrun tried to sort through the flood of information about the barbarian who had, uselessly, been exactly her type, that was the moment—
"Yeah, among ourselves we call him the Troll-Skull Crusher… Ah! Perfect timing — there's a guy up there who knows him real well. Hey! This young lady here wants to hear about Hamar!"
"Aaaaah?! Who's snooping around about Hamar?!"
BOOOOM-!!
Suddenly a voice like a savage bear's roar thundered out from somewhere, and a booming, pounding racket began to roll through the air.
For an instant Sigrun wondered if Thunder Rock Mountain had reopened for business; she snapped into a combat stance at the deafening noise.
Then a red-haired female warrior of the same staggering presence as Sigrun herself landed right in front of her — in a pose that, had Grihamar been watching, would have had him frothing at the mouth and screaming, Whoa! Superhero landing! Whoa, Terminator!
The moment Sigrun recognized her, she cried out inwardly.
Lipa Virna…!
The famous female warrior of the Thunder Fire Bear tribe, whose name meant the Ripping She-Bear!
A barbarian blessed by the bear spirit, she possessed monstrous strength and a savagery that lived up to her name — anything that fell into her hands got torn to shreds. For the past few years she had been making a name for herself across Frostheim's snowfields, enough that the knights of Reinhardt Territory had marked her as a person of interest.
More than that — she just jumped straight down here from that cliff up there…?! And that earlier boom was the ground-shaking thunder of her charge?!
She had casually leaped from a height that looked to be at least ten meters.
Just as the intel said, she was the owner of incredible physical—
"Ah, fuck! That hurts like hell! I think my leg's broken?! C-crazy! I tried to look cool for no damn reason! Hamar always makes it look so easy!"
"Who told you to jump from up there like that? Hamar himself always said not to try that at home. And look, it's obviously not broken. Quit whining and get up already."
"Hamar tricked me! I'm not letting that bastard get away with this! The price for mocking and deceiving me is going on that giant cock of his! If he doesn't put about thirty kids in my belly, I'll just grab him and— ayayaya?! Don't touch me?! Who the hell do you think you're laying hands on — whose female am I?!"
"Gyaaaaah?!"
"…"
BOOOOOOM-!!
…Or was she just an idiot?
Words rose to the tip of Sigrun's tongue, but she judged that speaking them honestly would make a fight unavoidable, so she forced them down with a hard swallow.
While Sigrun exercised superhuman patience, Lipa Virna — who had just one-handedly snatched up Einar, the man who'd been kindly explaining everything with his warm smile, and hurled him far away — snorted roughly and said:
"Who the hell dares lay a hand on me, Lipa Virna — the Great Warrior's breeding sow and pregnancy pouch, the future great mother of the Thunder Fire Bear tribe? You son of a bitch, you looking to die?"
"G-ghhh… I was just checking whether it was broken or not…"
"Shut up! Haven't you even been to that… that museum place Hamar talked about?! Don't you know 'look with your eyes only'?!"
The sheer power to fling a sturdy barbarian man like a firecracker toy!
Faced with this amazon of rumor-matching monstrous strength and physique, Sigrun quickly looked her up and down, gauging the gap in combat power between herself and Lipa Virna.
In a pure contest of strength, I am clearly outmatched. Best to avoid a frontal clash if at all possible.
Just as a bear doesn't stop charging a hunter after taking a few arrows, if she got careless after stabbing this warrior a few times with her sword, her body would be shredded into dozens of pieces on the spot.
So she was personally confirming why the intelligence unit had marked this woman as a person of interest and issued warnings — when Lipa Virna, still snorting toward the distant form of the flung Einar, turned on Sigrun without the slightest attempt to rein in her fierce aura and asked:
"So. Is it you?"
"Pardon?"
"You! The one seducing someone else's fiancé with that stacked body of yours— ugh, what the hell? Why are your tits so huge?! They're almost as big as mine!"
"S-sudden sexual harassment?!"
And just like that, Lipa Virna was staring wide-eyed at her chest and firing off sexual harassment out of nowhere!
The barbarian man named Einar had been so kind and gentlemanly it almost hurt — yet here Sigrun was, getting sexually harassed the instant she met another woman. She cried out in shock.
But a violent surge of emotion inevitably summons violent bust morphing.
Jiggle-jiggle-♡
"H-holy shit… even the shape is ridiculously pretty…! This bitch must've heard the rumor about a prime stud for breeding and come here dead set on seducing Hamar!"
"W-what?!"
As Lipa Virna alone piled on wilder and wilder misunderstandings, Sigrun hurriedly thrust both hands toward her, about to shout that it wasn't like that—
"Grr, I'm the one who receives Hamar's seed!"
"No, I mean that's not—?!"
"The proxy of the Great Thunder Bear shall tear the earth with these claws!"
KRAAAAAAASH-!!
The moment Sigrun sensed a mighty threat that set her instincts screaming and hurriedly stepped back, a massive claw mark tore across the pure white snowfield where she had just been standing.