Into the World of Twisted Wonderland Pt 2

👑 The Beautiful Tyrant: Chapter 14 👑

"Does everybody in this school have super hearing?" Ace whispers to the group. "This lounge's buzzing with people, and we were over ten meters apart."

"The directional mic my brother installed in me can pick up human whispering fifty meters away," Ortho explains as Ace flinches at the explanation.

"Oho!" Lilia says in interest. "Impressive. Not even the fae and beastmen have many capable of that."

"Heh heh!" Ortho chuckles. "I know, right? My brother's amazing!" He happily says only to clear his throat, or so he has one...? "...Ahem. Anyway, Idia got permission from the headmage to let me come with him to class," he explains, with everyone remembering about what Cater said about how his brother takes him to class with him. "He's not desperately lonely or anything, okay?" He glares at the three.

"Ooh, gotcha," Cater says in understanding. "Sorry about that. My bad! You Shroud bros are this mysterious, almost legendary presence on campus. Guess I got a little carried away talking about you."

"Apology accepted," Ortho says. "And I'm sorry for getting all huffy about it," he adds apologetically. "I just don't want anyone getting the wrong idea about Idia."

"We're sorry, too," Angel apologizes, with him, at least she think he is, smiling at the apology.

"Bee tee dubs, Orthy, are you here for the SDC audition, too?" Cater asks.

"Yes, that's right!" He happily answers. "See, my brother..."

In Idia's room, Idia sit at the computer, rapidly typing on his computer with his tablet out. "I told Riddle at the housewarden meeting that I'd practice presenting my research..." the tablet says as he types. "But it doesn't matter how many thousand of simulations I run in my head. Presenting stuff to an audience? That's unplayable difficulty! I still don't wanna get YEARGHed at by Riddle, though...So with that in mind, I built a sound library for my own voice. And I've finally finished a program that reads out text smoothly in real time as you type!" He smirks. "I never knew I could sound so articulate. It's a level of fluency you'd never expect from synthesized speech! What do you think, Ortho? Is it sick or is it SICK?" He asks through the tablet as he looks to Ortho, observing him. "Nobody would ever guess the voice you're hearing is coming from the text-to-speech software, right?"

"That's incredible, Idia!" He says in awe. "Your voice is so crisp and clear!"

"Right? Man, I never knew I could sound so smooth!" He says through the tablet. "With this, I should be able to handle Q&A no prob. Whee hee hee! Science always beat brute-force grinding! Yeah, I'm a genius, I know."

"Uh-huh! I'm sure Riddle Rosehearts will be very impressed."

Idia looked at Ortho in shock. "U-uh, don't tell him, okay?" He pleads. "I want to keep this a secret from Riddle until the presentation's over. He's gonna give me that smug, know-it-all look and be all like, 'See? That wasn't so hard, was it?' And I'm gonna go, 'Wow, you didn't even notice I was lip-synching? Talk about amateur hour!'" He smirks. "I'm gonna wipe that smug look right off of his face. Whee hee hee!" He laughs.

Ortho watches him and sighs. "Now, come on, Idia...It's not nice to pick on underclassmen."

"Oh, it's cool," Idia reassures him. "He's a grade below me in school, but he's been housewarden longer than I have, so he's close enough to an upperclassman. I have to say, though-" He looks to his tablet. "After doing a deep dive into text-to-speech, it's a fascinating field. Virtual idols and stuff are popular nowadays. I was thinking of maybe installing a vocal synthesizer in you."

"Ooh, that sounds like fun!" Ortho happily says. "I'd love to try singing."

"Great! I'll get you trilling like a canary in no time, little bro."

"...So my brother's been getting big into making vocal synthesizers," Ortho finishes. "Since he went to a whole lot of trouble developing and polishing this, I want to see how far I can go with it. That's why I'm here auditioning."

The group look at him with eyes wide. "Wait, he PROGRAMMED a singing voice?" Ace exclaims. "Are you for real?!"

A/N: Hiyas everyone! I have both good news and bad news to share with you all. The good news is that spring break is here and it's happening NEXT WEEK, so I'll finally be able to get some downtime from school. Plus, unlike last spring break, if you guys remember, I don't have to worry about two exams, a wedding, and going to the hospital to visit my cousin, which means I can FINALLY decompress after the semester so far. Now, which brings me to the bad news: I'm not posting next week. The reason is...I just want to relax! 😫 the downtime should help me actually write more chapters for Book 5, which is good for me since I won't be on time constraints as usual (so far chapter 19 is written but 19 is half finished). Sorry to spring this on you all but I just want to reset my brain for spring break and actually relax because for nursing school, it's only the calm before the storm. So chapters will be releasing again in two weeks (March 20th) for me to catch up and relax/prepare myself (good thing I got my exams over with this time, huh? 😹)

As I said in my last chapter release, it's been over a year since I started writing this story. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for taking me this far, and you wanna know something else: the first work is only at 75k reads, and to think it took a year to reach that many views is just mind blowing 🤯. And that's not to say that the placements for these two works have been neck and neck in the top 50 in their categories, which is just...amazing. I thank you all for the likes you give, comments, and even views of my story and I have to say, that since last Wednesday, my phone has been blowing up with over 200 Wattpad notifications, me seeing that people have binge read the story, liked, and commented on it. It's just all been so much fun and I will continue!

Alright since this is getting a bit long, I'll try and stop soon but here's the last thing: if you guys join the stream, I'm thinking about doing something for the stream during spring break, but more details to come in the discord channel, so look forward to it! I'll see you guys again in two weeks! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

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