Dragon's life in college

ch 45

Classes started a couple days later, and although for the first few days it was a little strange to get used to running around and having to be on time to things, it didn’t take that long before the habits from the previous year came back. Sometimes, Nigel was almost convinced that he had never left, it felt like he had been there for so long. On the other hand, it felt like he hadn’t been there for more than a few days, a week at most, before he realized that they were already one month in. College time ran different from normal time, he concluded. Living it felt so long, yet before one knew it, months had flown by.

In contrast to the previous year, he found his entire experience here pleasurable. No dreaded drama classes, no embarrassing Incineration class, and best of all, no bullying siblings. By now, all of the teachers in the Accounting major either had had him before, or knew of him, which made his life easier as they knew better than to call on him to answer before class and also to assign him harder work than his classmates.

He also might have inadvertently picked up a “side hustle” as Turtle called it. Nigel called it practice. Basically, Ryu might have let slip around the school that Nigel had reorganized his finances, and now he had some fellow students and even a few teachers asking him to do theirs.

It had taken a little adjustment for Nigel, who was used to slipping through life with his head down, unobserved. Or at least as unobserved as one could be when they’re larger than average and bright red, but still, at least not bothered. Having complete strangers come up to him asking him to not only organize their money, but also offering to pay him was a bit strange. He also had to confirm that reorganizing his teacher’s finances wouldn’t be illegal in any way. Fortunately, having two Dragon Overlord majors as friends meant they had the resources to look up anything having to do with laws, especially when one of them was the literal niece of a Queen and more than likely the future Queen herself.

Yes, as much as Oceania preferred to downplay her rank in the royal family, Nigel had clearly seen during his visit the blatant favoritism her Aunt showed her over every other candidate to the throne.

Anyway, after some looking around and Oceania speaking to her father, it was confirmed that Nigel could redo his teacher’s finances without being a problem. And since it was such a long and hard process, he couldn’t have guessed that someone could be less organized than Ryu, his teacher agreed to replace this as his final project. Not that Nigel minded anyway, as he was almost halfway through the entire thing already.

“But I haven’t told you what to do with the information I gave you,” his teacher had said, confused, when Nigel told him.

“I got bored and started doing everything possible with the financial information you gave us.”

“I’m starting to wonder who should be teaching this class,” his teacher had muttered. Nigel made it a point to not hear that part.

But, anyway, Nigel now had extra work to keep him busy as well as a small source of income. Because he would be busy, he had told everyone who asked him that it was unlikely he could get everything done before the end of the semester. Everyone understand, a few of his classmates had actually requested to get theirs done after the winter break anyway. When Nigel had asked why, they told it was so they would have a good excuse to ask for money as gifts, since they literally wouldn’t be able to remember how much they had.

All in all, Nigel was having a good semester. Even his unlooked forward to Incineration practice wasn’t as awful as it had been last semester or he had been imagining. As it turned out, Oceania and Ryu had hit upon a plan they thought would work perfectly to help him.

“The problem with us trying to help you is that we can only get so close to you while you’re actually trying to breath out fire without risking getting burnt,” Ryu said.

“Well, only one of us,” Oceania had pointed out from the other side. The two of them had kidnapped him, and were currently dragging him out to an abandoned practice field.

“All right, the one of us who breathes fire and has a lot of experience using breath weapons cannot get too close to help your technique while you’re doing it to ensure you learn control. The only one of us who can get close to you, doesn’t make a point to use her breath weapon that often and doesn’t usually bother with the most accurate of control.”

“When you literally creature a whirlwind with your breath, you either hypercontrol it or you just learn to aim and control it enough so it doesn’t blow your friends out of the air.”

“I don’t think that is wise behavior for a future queen,” Ryu replied. “Shouldn’t you have better control over your own abilities than just a general, ‘I won’t knock you out of the air,’ control?”

“Probably, but I can work on it. The point is, since the issue is that you need to learn to control your breath and we can only do so much, we need someone who can do both of our jobs.”

“What do you mean?” Nigel asked, also noting that the field they were dragging him to was one reserved for Water Dragons, not Fire Dragons.

“I mean, we’re still going to help you. There are some aspects of learning to control fire breath that are different from controlling wind breath,” Ryu said.

“But the point is we’re handing you off to my Dad to help you,” Oceania said.

“What, your Dad? Why?”

“Because, we just told you,” Ryu said. “The main issue with your control is right when you’re about ready to exhale. But that means that I can’t be right near you, as even standing directly behind you while you exhale is a little dangerous. And to be best able to help you, I have to be next to you which is far too dangerous. And as much as I want to help you I’m not willing to risk my handsome face. Ooof.”

Oceania had reached around Nigel had poked him hard in the ribs. “As if any self-respecting dragoness would want to be with you. Anyway, we talked about it and while Ryu can help you with the finer details of fire breathing specifically, and I can be moral support, my Dad is actually the best option. As a water dragon he can get as close to your fire as he wants to and he won’t be any danger at all, which means he can help you. He also leans on the side of hypercontrolling his wind breath, so he has all the tricks and techniques for control up his sleeve. And don’t worry, he’s very nice.”

Before Nigel could have even formulated a thought in argument, let alone started to say it, they had arrived.