The Barbarian Couple's Physiques Are the Finest Creations (1)

“Welco.... Gasp! Barbarian?!”

The moment we opened the shop door, a friendly welcome was replaced by a shrill scream.

The clerk at the counter took one look at us, backed away, crashed into a display rack, and collapsed onto the floor.

For a moment, silence swept through the shop as though someone had doused it with cold water.

The other customers choosing clothes began whispering as they watched us.

“Are those... barbarians from beyond the Wall? You know, the 「Revered People」.”

“Leather clothes and an ax, too... They really are.”

“Shouldn’t we call the guards?”

Even so, the atmosphere was not hostile.

They were simply wary, observant gazes fixed on something they had never seen before.

Of course, under normal circumstances, a barbarian would have immediately drawn an ax and caused a scene, shouting, “Who are you calling a barbarian!”

“Now, now.”

I chuckled and gently wrapped an arm around Kara’s shoulders as they began to tense.

Then I said in a deliberately dignified voice with a pointed edge,

“Your words are a little harsh. Our baby is listening, and you’re openly calling us ‘barbarians.’”

“Huh, wh-what?”

The clerk blinked in confusion.

He seemed to have short-circuited because, instead of getting angry over his mistake, I had suddenly started talking about child-rearing.

I seized the opening, added a sly smile, and said,

“It’s bad for prenatal education. Or you could use what that customer said earlier, 「Revered People」. It sounds much nicer, doesn’t it?”

“Ah....”

The clerk’s face reddened like a ripe tomato at my unruffled response.

Kara beside me understood my intentions and joined in, stroking her belly.

“That’s right. We can’t have our baby learning bad words before it’s even born.”

Kara’s voice was calm.

But her blue eyes radiated the silent pressure of ‘If you don’t apologize, I’ll tear the pillars out of this shop.’

“I-I’m sorry! I was rude...!”

The clerk hurriedly bowed his head and apologized.

The soldiers nearby seemed to relax, murmuring, “Oh... They can communicate?” and “They’re more civilized than I expected.”

Situation resolved.

It was an elegant victory.

‘The count was right after all.’

I remembered the advice Count Eisen had given us the night before.

『The borderlands see all sorts of people coming and going, so there will certainly be some prejudice, but the eyes watching you will be more wary and observant because you are unfamiliar than driven by blind hatred.』

『Make use of the low expectations created by that prejudice. If you respond with easygoing charm, their wariness will waver all the more easily.』

『Hatred with deep roots is difficult to cut down at the base, but wariness with shallow roots is like a weed that can be pulled out with the slightest effort.』

He had been exactly right.

The small show of manners and easygoing charm we offered uprooted their shallow wariness with ease.

I winked at Kara, and she chuckled and hugged my arm tightly.

‘Good. We’ve started off on the right foot.’

Just as we were about to start seriously choosing some clothes,

Bang-!

The door to the workroom at the back of the shop flew open, and an elderly man with a measuring tape around his neck came rushing out.

He was the shop’s head tailor, his hair thick with white but his eyes flashing like a beast’s.

“What’s all this commotion! I can’t concentrate on making clothes!”

He shouted angrily and swept his gaze across the showroom.

Then his eyes locked onto us.

“......!”

His eyes widened as though they were about to pop out.

I reflexively stepped in front of Kara.

Just as I began to wonder if he was about to pick a fight too,

“O... Ooooooh!”

An exclamation burst from the old man’s mouth.

His eyes gleamed like a miner who had found an uncut diamond after wandering through a mine.

Or like the madness of an artist who had finally encountered the muse he had spent his entire life seeking.

“Move! Everybody move!”

The old man shoved the clerk aside and charged toward me.

“I... I can’t believe it!”

Without so much as an introduction, he began feeling my waist and shoulders.

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing!”

I backed away in embarrassment, but he paid no attention and poked at the muscles in my back.

“Over two meters tall... and no belly?”

“Pardon?”

“At this size, you should normally have a beer belly or fat sagging around your sides... But this is a perfect inverted triangle!”

He whipped out his measuring tape and took my chest and waist measurements in an instant.

“Broad chest... narrow waist... Good heavens! This is a sculpture! A living statue!”

The tailor shouted in excitement, spraying spit.

“You there! What are you waiting for! Bring pins! And fabric and chalk!”

At his roar, the other tailors poured out of the workroom.

They surrounded me and repeatedly exclaimed as though they were looking at some rare spectacle.

“Wow... Look at that shoulder line.”

“There’s no way he’ll fit into off-the-rack sizes, is there? We’ll have to take the waist in all the way.”

“Putting baggy ready-made clothes on a body like this would be a sin! We have to make them to measure!”

In their eyes, I was no longer a ‘barbarian.’

I was the finest ‘canvas’ and ‘mannequin’ on which they could show off their skills.

The clothing shops in this border city mainly catered to large soldiers, so they were accustomed to making clothes that concealed the physiques of men with protruding bellies.

But a perfectly muscular model had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and their professional instincts took over.

“Excuse me... Hello?”

I looked at Kara awkwardly.

But her situation was not much different.

“Good heavens... Madam! I’m sorry to trouble you, but would you turn around just once?”

Female tailors were surrounding Kara.

“Oh my, oh my! Look at those hips!”

“You’re so beautifully tall, and those proportions... That’s a fit you could never get from the young ladies of the Imperial nobility!”

“You’re pregnant? Oh, so it’s still early. Even so, your figure hasn’t lost its shape! In an Empire-style dress, you’d look like a goddess descending!”

Kara, too, had the 「healthy, athletic Valkyrie」 look rarely seen in the Empire.

To tailors who made clothes only for the painfully thin young ladies of the nobility, Kara’s firm, well-defined physique was a blessing in itself.

“Um... excuse me, we only came to buy a few ready-made outfits....”

Kara spoke dazedly, but the head tailor firmly shook his head.

“No! That would be an insult to clothing!”

His face flushed with excitement as he launched into an impassioned speech.

“We’ve occasionally dressed life-size marble statues at the request of eccentric nobles in the capital. Their proportions were perfect, of course. But they were merely static lumps of stone! They were dead works that required no consideration of the mechanics of joints or the rhythm of muscles for clothing’s true essence—‘movement.’”

He grabbed my arm and his eyes shone like those of a seeker.

“But you two are different! That creation... it is the very body of a living, breathing hero who has stepped out of mythology! This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pour my skills into a moving work of art!”

“I appreciate the compliments, but this is really embarrassing, so...”

“Please, I beg you. Let us make your clothes. We don’t even need payment! No, please, just wear them!”

“No, you can’t simply refuse payment. You’re running a business.”

“It’s because it would be an honor to put my clothes on a body like this! Come, this way!”

In the end, the tailors took us by the hands and dragged us into the changing rooms.

It was a complete madhouse.

“Spread your legs a little farther! The width of those thighs... Wow, that’s art.”

“Madam, raise your arm. An off-the-shoulder dress that reveals that shoulder line would be perfect!”

Dozens of tailors descended on us, taking measurements, holding up fabrics, and inserting pins.

At first, I was flustered, but eventually, I found it rather funny.

I had worried that we would be discriminated against for being barbarians, but instead of discrimination, this had turned into a fan meeting.

‘The people of the Empire are more passionate than I expected.’

I chuckled as I looked at my reflection, surrounded by tailors.

Then I heard Kara’s voice from beyond the partition beside me.

“Oh, this dress is pretty. Varg! How do I look in this?”

“Pretty! Very pretty!”

Kara’s delighted voice lifted my spirits as well.

The serious fitting began.

Kara went first.

When Kara pulled back the changing-room curtain and stepped out, another wave of admiration burst through the shop.

“Ooooh...!”

It was an outfit the tailors had created from a men’s military officer’s formal uniform, altering it around the waist and hips.

The black uniform contrasted with Kara’s pale skin, creating an even more alluring atmosphere.

And because she was still in the early stages of pregnancy and her belly had yet to show, her full figure completed the look—the very definition of a perfect uniform fit.

“Perfect, Madam! It’s as though the goddess of the battlefield has descended!”

The tailors clapped enthusiastically, while the soldiers browsing nearby gazed at her, spellbound.

“Wow... You can get a fit like that?”

“She looks even better than the Imperial Guard!”

Kara seemed to like her reflection too, smiling as she turned this way and that to admire herself.

The problem was me.

“Nngh....”

Inside the changing room, I was groaning.

“Sir? Are you almost done?”

“No, it’s just... I can’t get my arm through.”

I was sweating profusely as I wrestled with the shirt.

My height, nearly two meters, was a problem, but the bigger problem was my muscles.

There was no fabric capable of accommodating my rock-hard, enormous trapezius and deltoids bulging like stone.

The stiff, inflexible fabric characteristic of Imperial formal uniforms began screaming before it even made it over my shoulders.

When I pulled back the curtain and stepped out with my upper body half exposed, the tailors’ expressions grew serious.

“Good heavens... Even the largest size is nowhere near big enough.”

The head tailor stroked his beard with a troubled expression.

“Are you staying in this border city for a few days? If you give us a little time, we could have special fabric brought in from the capital and make one to fit you.”

At his suggestion, I shook my head.

“No, we’re just making a brief stop before heading straight to 「Eisengard」. We can’t stay long....”

My answer sent a stir through the tailors.

“You’re going to 「Eisengard」?”

“That place is close to the capital, so it’s crawling with skilled craftsmen!”

“If the people there see this body... we’ll lose even the chance!”

Their eyes wavered.

The pride of the borderland artisans.

The fear that they could not let such an overwhelming creation be snatched away by the polished dandies of the capital drove them on.

“No! We can’t let him be taken!”

The head tailor shouted, eyes wide.

“Bring out the largest thing we have! Let’s at least try to get his arms into the sleeves!”

The frantic tailors rummaged through the storeroom and brought out a gigantic uniform large enough to cover a bear’s hide.

They swarmed me and began forcing the uniform onto me.

“Now, your arm this way... Hup! Just a little more!”

“Huff... huff....”

After their desperate efforts, they finally managed to get both my arms into the sleeves.

But.

“This is... a bit tight, isn’t it? I can’t breathe.”

I did not dare try to fasten the buttons, and the back and shoulders were stretched so taut they looked ready to burst.

“It’s fine! We’ve got the fit! Now, try straightening your shoulders!”

At the tailor’s urging, I cautiously straightened my shoulders.

Just a tiny bit.

I had applied only the slightest force, no more than the amount used by Winterclaw warriors when warming up.

At that moment.

Riiiiiip-!

Rrrrip!

With a sharp ripping sound, the fabric covering my back screamed.

The barbarian’s compressed muscles.

There was no way ordinary fabric could withstand the explosive force generated when these muscles, elastic as rubber balls and dense as steel, repeatedly contracted and relaxed.

Tattered scraps of cloth fluttered through the air.

Suddenly left bare-chested, I awkwardly scratched the back of my head.

“Ah... This is why I said I don’t wear clothes like this. Do I have to pay for it?”

But the tailors’ reaction was unexpected.

“Pay for it? This is data!”

They paid no attention to the fact that the clothes had been torn.

Rather, their eyes gleamed as they cried, ‘I knew my prediction was right!’

“Did you see that? Ordinary Oxford fabric can’t withstand the tensile stress!”

“A silk blend won’t work either! It doesn’t have enough stretch!”

Without even sparing the torn clothes a glance, they pressed against my back again with measuring tapes and launched into an intense conference.

Just as I was becoming more flustered by their frenzied enthusiasm,

The head tailor shouted with a grim, determined expression.

“This won’t do. Bring it out!”

“What? Surely...?”

“That’s right. We’re bringing out the treasure of the Closer family!”

A short while later.

The head tailor emerged from deep inside the storeroom carrying an ebony box thickly coated in dust.

His hand trembled slightly as he opened the box.

Creak.

When the box opened, it revealed a peculiar fabric with a lustrous sheen.

It was a mysterious material whose color shifted strangely whenever light struck it, like the hide of a living creature.

“What is this...?”

One of the soldiers watching from nearby widened his eyes.

Head Tailor Closer stroked the fabric and said in a trembling voice,

“It’s 「Behemoth Hide」.”

“Pardon? Behemoth?”

The customers in the shop gasped and fell silent.

In the early days of the Empire’s founding.

The legendary high-level monster Behemoth, said to have poured forth when the 「Gate」 opened.

Its hide was tougher than steel yet more flexible than rubber, and, most remarkably, it remembered the user’s mana pattern, meaning it could regenerate itself when damaged if mana was infused into it—a material with insane performance.

After the Gate was sealed, its source disappeared, and even when it became available, that legendary fabric could only be found in the Imperial treasury or among the military supplies of commanders on the front lines.

‘Wait, why are they using an item of national-treasure grade to make clothes for me, whom they’ve only just met?’

I stared at the head tailor, dumbfounded.

But his eyes were already gleaming with madness.

He was in no state to listen to reason.