After Agnar fully butchered the reindeer, it was finally time for them to eat dinner and then sleep. A ton of work waited for him first thing tomorrow morning, so he didn’t want to stay up late.

But there was another problem that would make it hard for him to sleep, the fact that he was going to sleep with Yuwaku on that tight log bed he built.

He can’t sleep on the ground because he’ll freeze to death, and he’ll die before letting her be the one to sleep on the ground.

But why would he find it hard to sleep? He wouldn’t have minded if she were a normal girl. But she wasn’t.

Yuwaku is a Nymph, and while she can’t blind or kill him, he still fully understood the extent of her beauty, which was just as exhausting to deal with. So sleeping in the same room with her was nothing but an anxiety attack, and going into the same bed was going to give him a life crisis.

Agnar now was in a special situation, a troubling pickle that he didn’t know how to get out of or even explain in words. But if he had to describe a Nymph’s beauty, he would say that it’s everything that could go wrong, going wrong, rapidly.

First, details. Just looking at her face, even for a second, he could tell exactly how wide her face is, how many hairs are on her head that he saw, where her eyes were looking, clearly see his reflection in her eyes, hear her breath, smell her, and even naturally understand the emotions she was showing like they were his own.

Seeing and comprehending so much detail at once also had the side effect of making everything else look unpolished and not that graphically impressive.

It was like an old game that you played fifteen years ago; you remember it as stunning and beautiful, but when you replay it, you think those graphics are ugly compared to what’s out now. But the real damage comes when he sees himself.

Whenever Agnar would look at himself right after looking at Yuwaku, he would always feel far too ugly and disgusting to be around her, like they didn’t belong in the same world.

His eyebrows aren’t that symmetrical, his face is too round, his skin isn’t as flawless, his eyes aren’t as clear, he doesn’t smell that good, the campfire smoke makes him stink a bit, his clothes are cheap... and it keeps piling up.

But then, he is aware of the difference between a Nymph and a human, and he knows that he isn’t the ugly and disgusting one; She is the problem here, being too perfect to be compared to.

But then, the problems keep spiraling out of control. Because the closer he gets to her, the more details he can see and understand. Yuwaku doesn’t work the same way as humans; she doesn’t even follow normal biological rules... which only makes her more confusing.

First, she doesn’t need to eat, but if she eats food, nothing comes out. How did he know? He’s been living with her for a while now and can tell.

That was also the reason cold didn’t harm her. She is a beauty given form, and beauty can’t get cold; it’s an intangible concept.

Also... strangely enough, her clothes don’t get dirty. In fact, the longer she wears something, the cleaner it gets. Which took him weeks to wrap his head around, which didn’t help because that extended even further. If she were to wear old clothes, those clothes would turn brand new in hours.

Agnar wouldn’t deny that he had her wear his old clothes, even if they barely fit on her, so they could be fixed and turned new again. Which magically worked, so instead of repairing his armor and weapons, he’ll just have her hold them for a while and strike some poses.

But then, that repair can actually extend to other people. Kiss the pain away, actually work with her. She can touch a wound and make it heal faster. Just looking at her is enough to make someone forget pain, and that works even when she is suppressing her beauty.

Then comes the confusing part, looking at anything besides her flawless face. When she is standing up, and even while suppressing her beauty, she still seems to always glow faintly, which isn’t actual light, but just an illusion caused by the brain trying to express the details visually.

He could even tell her weight just by looking, and she weighs 63.50236457862452452... the details keep flowing, so he’ll stop thinking about it there.

Those clothes also didn’t help hide any details, and it wasn’t the fault of the clothes themselves. If she isn’t hiding her beauty, Agnar could tell so many details about her beauty that she might as well not be wearing anything.

If people knew what they were looking for, they could tell at a glance that she was a Nymph, which made Agnar even more concerned. Since he can see Yuwaku’s beauty without getting blinded, and knows what a Nymph looks like, he could tell there were several of them inside Alina...

Returning to Yuwaku and her whole body... he better not go into details, because they get more terrifying the more he thinks about them.

But now, he is stuck on the small bed with her, trying his hardest to sleep, and he’s failing miserably. He needs to sleep so he can have enough energy to cut wood and work in the morning, but now he can’t...

Or would he? Because just lying by her side felt so relaxing and serene that he probably won’t need to sleep to get a full night’s rest, in fact, he was already feeling more energetic than if he chugged two stamina potions.

That was a bad thing, though. Because he knows well that there is a crash waiting for him the moment he leaves her side.

Thankfully, both of them still wore their thick clothes due to the cold; otherwise, he might’ve been in huge trouble.

"Yuwaku..." He called, and she slowly turned her head. "Can’t sleep?"

"Not with you so close by. We might need to do that again." He sighed, and she giggled.

"It’s my pleasure. Let’s become one again."

At that moment, Agnar disappeared, and so did she. The world around them shifted, almost breaking apart as wisps of black magic swirled in the air. Even though they looked majestic, they held almost no power and were just the byproduct of something innate.

A second later, Agnar was alone in the wooden bed, with Yuwaku nowhere to be seen. He sat there, shirtless with a shining glass sword in hand, and a large tattoo on his back. That tattoo was of Yuwaku, a terrifying, detailed, naked figure of her drawn on his back, out of his sight.

While holding her sword in his hand, and having her figure engraved on his back, he held the same power and beauty of a Nymph, finally allowing him to relax for a while.

But as things were going before, this wasn’t all. The moment he blinked, he wasn’t there anymore. Instead, Yuwaku was once more alone in the bed, fully naked and stretching, across her back, a large scar was burned into her flawless body in the form of a black jaguar engulfed in lightning, and it spanned from her neck down to her hips.

It looked like a sick artist had drawn it on her skin with a knife and a hot iron.

The Jaguar’s maw wrapped around her neck, his claws reaching toward her chest, his body on her back, and his tail wrapped around her right leg.

A Nymph is the projection of the beauty of something greater, so they didn’t have to confine themselves to being humanoids. A Nymph can show up as an elf, a dragon, or even an object, a rare gem or treasure. In this case, Yuwaku condenses all of her beauty in the form of a sword and a tattoo and integrates herself into Agnar so he can wield her power.

That also had the strangest of effects. Nymphs are perfect beauties, but that itself was wrong; if they are perfect, then they can’t get more beautiful or stronger, they lack a fundamental thing, a flaw.

You can’t have perfect beauty without a flaw. We only know that light is bright because we know darkness. We only know what good is because we saw the horrors of evil. And we only value beauty because we saw what ugliness looks like.

That’s why, while she became a beautiful tattoos that decorate Agnar’s back, he became her flaw. A horrifying image of a beast burned onto her flawless back like a scar, allowing her more control and once more opening the path for her to grow stronger and more beautiful.

He is a Nymph bearer, and she is his weapon. The Blade of the Capital Agnar, and his sword’s name is Yuwaku.