Chapter Text
Enkrid is a beta
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Most of the Border Guard are betas, and according to Luagarne, there are Squires that are betas.
So there was nothing to worry about, even though he had never even considered, let alone believed, that gender was another wall on the path to Knighthood. Besides, there's a saying that the goddess of luck is blind to all things when it comes to talent, and wasn’t talent a more important deciding factor in the path to knighthood than gender?
And if death and a lack of talent wouldn’t stop Enkrid from chasing that once-tattered dream of knighthood, why would being a beta stop him? Though he didn't have the natural advantage of an alpha's strength or the agility of an omega, he would just learn with the hand he was dealt, as he always had.
Besides, it wasn't as if being a beta had no benefits.
He doesn't have to deal with heats or ruts, which seemed like a huge waste of time that could be used on otherwise productive tasks, such as training. Even with the pills the medical unit provides that almost no one–except Krais, who is one of the few who do take it, probably just because he thinks that going to a brothel every couple of months would be too expensive–seems take the pills, most likely thinking they would end up as another live guinea pigs for the alchemist guild.
Moreover, he has seen how the rest of the madmen company had to deal with it.
And while Ragna seems to just sleep through it, and he has no idea if Esther even has a secondary gender. Auden, when last asked, said something along the lines of that his Father guided his path to tranquility, or to put it simply, he prayed it away. Jaxson and Rem go out to deal with it.
Well, Jaxson goes to the redlight district frequently, so who knows what he's actually doing there, and Rem seems to actually deal with it by just going out to hunt as an alternative, so maybe it wasn't so terrible, seeing that none of them are affected that badly.
But those bastards were all lunatics; he couldn't judge just based on them, and besides, their ruts also lasted a while if anything, what with them asking for days off at a time, especially during winter, just to avoid shoveling duty. That's besides the point, though.
The biggest benefit, in Enkrid’s opinion, was that he didn't have to deal with pheromones and the whole bag of issues that came with it.
And while Enkrid didn't know exactly what that bag of issues entailed–after all, even though he spent the majority of his life on the road, most mercenaries he traveled with were betas–he did know that it was often used as an intimidation tactic.
Hell, he’s seen his company do it countless times. They were even doing it to each other when he got placed into the squad after one too many squad captains died at their hands, and they ran out of people who would take the position.
And while he couldn’t actually smell it, he could feel the faint air of tension and the reaction of others typically tipped him off that someone was using their scent to intimidate.
Plus Vengeance, through a roundabout way filled with a lot of insults and the like, asked him how he could stand their pheromones. To which Enkrid responded with a look of ‘what pheromones, I can’t smell them’ to Vengeance’s dismay and anger, he realized that Enkrid was, in fact, not an alpha, and stalked off. Though he didn’t know at the time that it was because of Julia, the owner of the herb shop Enkrid frequented and Vengence’s crush, he now repeatedly teases him about that interaction.
However funny that interaction was, he did what he did best and got some, albeit small, insights about the world, specifically how much scents seemed to affect those who could smell them.
Somewhat like a weaker version of the will that junior knight Aisia and that rapier-wielding swordsman used, but that’s about all he knew when it came to pheromones.
And even learning the will of refusal took him many, many deaths to Pel to grasp it. While Enkrid welcomed walls, he wasn't stupid enough to want to deal with otherwise unnecessary challenges.
Even Krais said so, giving some off-handed compliment about how it wasn't that Enkrid was an idiot, it was just that he found using his head a hassle. Thinking about that again really made him want to go over and hit him. Still, Enkrid resisted acting on that impulse; he wasn’t like Rem after all.
And right now, for once, Enkrid was using his head outside of combat or anything knight-related to try and figure out something that had been bugging him for a bit.
Why has his company been acting so strangely? Even more so than their usual level of crazy.
Enkrid knows that the madmen company was nowhere near normal, excluding him, of course, but even they had their norms. He knew what they were like normally. Enkrid is nothing but observant; if he weren’t, he wouldn’t have survived until now.
He knows that Ragna is a directionally challenged swordsman who, even with his laziness, was undoubtedly a genius.
Rem is a brute barbarian with the nickname noble hunter who was a lot more perceptive than he led on.
Jaxson, who moved around with the presence of an alley cat, rarely spoke and even more rarely showed any emotions on his face.
Auden is a religious zealot who’s built like a bear and seems more reasonable at first, but is as bad as the rest of them.
Krais, a guy whose eyes turn into gold coins at the mention of krona, but has a good head on his shoulders.
And Esther is a mage who can turn into a panther that would gouge out anyone's eyes if they stared for too long, truly a horrible temper.
Actually, most of the company were geniuses with a god-awful temper, which is why they ended up in the madmen squad in the first place, and why he was designated as their squad captain.
But he knows them nonetheless, and Enkrid knew that they would behave strangely sometimes after an intense battle or mission, where you could feel the tension in the air, but those bouts didn’t last long.
And even that has been happening less and less, as his skills have increased. But this decrease in frequency ended up being a trade-off for how long and how intense these periods of tension were.
He would deem this a ‘normal’ type of strangeness, something that didn’t exceed the expected responses of his company.
Plus, he wasn't that worried; his company weren't children, even if they acted like it sometimes. They could handle themselves, so he never put much thought into this matter.
After all, why waste time contemplating useless thoughts when he could continue to ponder, reflect, and refine his swordsmanship?
But there was also another type of strangeness, something he only saw after his first wall.
They all started behaving a bit differently than usual; they hovered a lot more. It felt like they were taking shifts watching him, as unbelievable as that may sound. The mother henning stopped after a day or so, but the overall behavior of chaperoning him never really went away, though it didn’t bother him in the first place.
What really made this behavior unusual compared to their typical madness was the sudden physical touches.
A tap on the shoulder. A pat on the back. A brush against his nape. An occasional arm over his shoulders. A head in his lap. Hell, sometimes even a hug.
This increase in skinship, the simple touches, by itself, he couldn’t care less.
But it was who these touches came from that really triggered his instinct that something was off. These were people who didn’t seem capable of casual intimacy outside of a mission or otherwise.
But even this he eventually got accustomed to, no matter how bizarre it was, although initially Enkrid had wanted to take them all to a church to check for possession.
It almost felt like they were clinging to him. An idle passing thought, and something that will happen the day Ragna can point out what direction is north.
So what of it? It was strange, yes, but not harmful, and he’s pretty sure they’re not possessed.
However, over the past week or so, his company has been acting so strangely that it might as well have leapfrogged beyond his expectations.
And it has really been getting on his nerves.
Even Shinar’s fairy-style jokes, which he will never get, are getting more and more strange. He was just glad that Dunbachel and Terrisa were out on a mission. He didn’t want them to get influenced by the rest of the company and start acting strangely as well.
But no matter how much it peeves Enkrid, he was not going to do anything about it. They’re all adults. He’s sure they’ll work through whatever has gotten into them.
So it was just a matter of patience and waiting it out, and when it came to patience, in his opinion, he was second to none.
But right now it was really starting to run out.
Especially when someone was currently preventing him from leaving the barracks.
“What are you doing blocking the door Ragna.” It was less a genuine question and more an exclamation of ‘what the hell are you doing?’
But before Ragna could reply, another voice chimed in.
“Captain, we need to have a chat with you about something.” This time, it was Krais who replied first. Enkrid looked around; Auden, Rem, Jaxson, and even Esther in her panther form all looked at him, seemingly in agreement.
Realizing that being stubborn and pushing through would be a losing battle, Enkrid retreated from the door and sat back down on his cot.
‘Maybe today I’ll finally find out why they’ve all been acting so off,’ he thought with a bit of humor at the bizarreness of the situation.
Rem is annoyed.
Scratch that, he is pissed.
Even more pissed than when that lost bastard taunts him or when that shady wildcat provokes him.
And he’s sure that he isn’t the only one either.
He’s seen the other crazy bastards, and they seem as on edge as he is.
And it's all because of one guy.
Captain.
Why? What did the craziest out of them all do this time?
He was sparring with someone. A lot.
Now this wasn’t just because he was sparring with someone else and coming back to the barracks beaten black and blue. That training maniac does that on the daily, so that wasn’t the issue.
Now, normally, if Captain were to spar with someone, they wouldn’t be too worried about him.
The captain wasn't someone who would die from something as simple as a spar.
Still, typically one or more of them would follow him just in the off chance that someone who could and would kill him came along.
But even that was only sometimes; they didn’t need to chaperone him.
He had come a long way in terms of strength; even though he was still frustratingly slow at learning things, he wouldn’t be taken out by some small fry. Plus, most people who came knocking were just looking for a spar and not a life-or-death battle.
But he had been sparring with seemingly the same guy at the seemingly same spot in the forest for over a week straight, coming back grinning like a madman. And Captain was no pushover now, so if he had been sparring with the same guy for a week, it must’ve meant that this guy had comparable skill.
So what’s the big deal? He’s having fun, and he’s returning alive and uncrippled, nothing to worry about, right?
The issue was that none of them knew who he was sparring with.
Except it wasn’t even an issue at first; it was just a small oddity, a change in the captain’s schedule.
Typically, the captain was a man who lived every day on almost the exact same routine: waking up, eating, training, sparring, sometimes going into town to spar, more training if he wasn’t injured, eating, and then more training before going to bed.
He followed the same routine to the letter, except every once in a while, when he would act exceedingly strange before suddenly learning a technique or breaking into the next level.
But that was just Captain being Captain.
Even though they had seen it plenty of times, it didn’t get any less shocking, and at this point, Rem just assumed Captain had some magic or was just built different.
However, over the past week, he has been heading out to the forests around the Border Guard at the crack of dawn.
Now, in the beginning, none of them were too worried–well, maybe not everyone, what with Big-Eyes and his constant overthinking–but that’s besides the point.
Going out before training, strange for sure, but it was to go spar, plus he even came back to train more before bed, so it wasn’t all that weird. That was just typical behavior from a training maniac.
Rem really started noticing that none of them knew who Captain was sparring with one morning, when that perpetually lost bastard followed the captain out to keep an eye on him. It was probably just because his rut was soon, what with him clinging to and scenting Captain more than usual.
It did kinda piss him off, well, everything that guy did pissed him off, but he didn’t want to be a hypocrite–hell, they all scent him, it's even turned into a type of competition somehow–so he wasn’t about to say anything. Even so, that didn’t mean he liked it.
But that idiot came back not even 30 minutes after he left.
“Hey, lazy, did you miss sleeping so much? I'll let you sleep forever if you want.” Rem taunted from where he was sharpening his ax.
Sure, he understood why Ragna was acting like that, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t annoyed about the excessive clinging and scenting though, so sue him for looking for a spar.
Ragna turned his head towards Rem, his lethargic tone holding more tension than usual. “Shut up, you crazy savage, if you want to die that bad, you don’t have to say so, let's make it quick. I have to go find Captain.”
His pheromones wafted through the air, heavy and trying to intimidate Rem with a message of ‘I’ll kill you if you don’t back down’.
It didn’t work, of course; they’ve tried it on each other enough times to know that it didn’t affect any of them, but it was still unpleasant.
Wrinking his nose at the scent, Rem turned to face him. “Damn you bastard, get your pheromones under control, it smells like shit.”
“Wait. What do you mean you have to find Captain?”
“I said what I said, idiot barbarian.”
Rem snorted and shifted his stance. “So you followed Captain, and you still got lost. Maybe we should stick a compass on your head. Why did you find another ‘short-cut’ and lose sight of Captain?”
With that, Ragna lunged at Rem.
They sparred for a bit. Neither of them was aiming to kill.
They’ve all begrudgingly gotten past the stage of actively trying to be each other’s cause of death. Now it was just a way to let out some frustration, and it really does pain him to say this, but sparring with them has sharpened his skills.
Nonetheless, that didn’t mean they liked each other, but it did mean that they weren’t actually wishing that each other kicked the bucket.
No matter how much Rem wanted to maim them sometimes, but just because he was called a savage doesn’t mean he actually would, he had standards. Plus, it would be tough to kill that group of insane bastards, and he didn’t think Captain would appreciate them killing each other.
So they sparred.
Scratch that, it was more of a clash, a short fight, than an actual spar, before they sensed Captain approaching the training ground outside the barracks.
Enkrid walked through the front gate, pausing. “Oh, Ragna, you’re here.”
That short phrase conveying the meaning of ‘good, you made your way back’ and ‘I thought I lost you, so I came back to look for you, or else you would’ve been lost in the forest and the Pen-Hanil mountains for a months-long vacation, and we can’t afford to lose hands right now.’
Ragna sauntered over to Enkrid, burying his face in his shoulder and wrapping his arms around Enkrid’s waist.
“Captain, next time you should follow me closer, or you’ll get lost.” He said, nuzzling into his neck, the words coming out muffled.
Rem looked over at Ragna with an incredulous look. “Damn you, directionally challenged dim-wit, if Captain followed you, you’d both be lost.” Which was expertly ignored by Ragna. Rem could feel his blood pressure rising again.
“No need to follow me next time,” Enkrid replied before they’d try and fight again.
Shrugging Ragna off, he walked into the barracks to grab something, then promptly left again.
They both watched Enkrid leave. His back disappeared from their view.
“Be glad that the captain can’t smell your disgusting scent on him.” To which Ragna responded with a middle finger before going into the barracks, presumably to go to sleep.
Rem didn’t really believe that Ragna lost Captain.
It was as probable as the day that stray cat stopped going out like a dam in heat, but his instincts told him that it probably wasn’t as simple as it seemed.
So he went to bother Big-Eyes for information.
“Hey, do you know where the captain has been going?”
“Well, that depends. Do you have any Krona on you?”
Now, Rem didn’t really care about Krona, but it was just the fact that Big-Eye was the one asking that made him not want to give a single Krona to him. So he didn’t.
WHACK.
“OW, geeze, okay fine, you didn’t need to hit me so hard,” Krais winced, rubbing his head, muttering under his breath, “If you keep at it, I might just become as slow as you.”
“OKAY, OKAY, I’ll tell you, no need to raise your ax.” Rem lowered his ax; it was a wonder that he hadn’t killed Big-Eyes up until this point, and it was beginning to look very enticing.
“Captain’s been going to the forests north of the front gate of Border Guard, that's all I know. Why don’t you just ask him anyway? It’s not like Captain’s not going to tell you.”
“Well, he’s not here right now.”
“...”
“What are you copying, Captain? Fix your eyes.”
“I’m not even doing anything!”
So Big-Eyes didn't know much, but he wasn’t too annoyed, after all, it was more of a feeling than anything based on facts.
There wasn’t much urgency; he was just curious about who the captain was sparring with, that's all.
Yeah, at least that’s what he thought until the captain came back flushed and covered in someone else's scent.