Novels by zhen wang (Arcadiawang)

The following dawn, the Faceless Mask Sorcerer emerged to perform his grim headcount. His piercing, screeching laugh echoed across the deck. "Hee-hee-hee! It seems there have been significant changes aboard! Excellent, excellent. Ten fewer, I see."The gathered apprentices stood with renewed energy and collective confidence. The cold, individualistic paranoia of before had been replaced by a fragile sense of unified purpose.Yunli and Bibilyanna observed the newly united mass of apprentices with utter indifference. Their immense innate talent had been recognized immediately by the Sorcerers, marking them for special treatment. Coupled with their inherent power to kill with ease, they had been utterly insulated from the brutal struggle the other apprentices had endured.Soranm, however, the ever-enigmatic figure, watched the newly formed alliance with keen interest, his gaze frequently lingering on the five Practitioners with open curiosity.The Boatswain'

For thirty days, an uneasy truce had held between the sailors and the apprentices aboard the sea-worn vessel. Igden, the sailors' leader, had maintained this peace through sheer force of intimidation, but he never allowed himself to relax his vigilance. He understood the brutal arithmetic of their situation all too well.While his men, all trained fighters with knight-level combat skills, currently held the advantage over these magic-less apprentices, Igden knew this was temporary. A chilling certainty haunted him: once these apprentices truly learned sorcery, they would be able to kill any knight with effortless ease. Their potential was limitless, a fact every apprentice understood instinctively.Men like Igden, even if they miraculously advanced to become legendary knights, would ultimately only ever serve powerful Sorcerers, begging for scraps of greater power. Hadn't the legendary knight Baron, and now their own Boatswain, both become servants to great Sorcerers?

The dawn brought the same macabre ritual. The Faceless Mask Sorcerer completed his headcount, acknowledged the missing five with a few chillingly encouraging words, and withdrew. His attendants—Soranm, Yunli, Bibilyanna, and the Boatswain—followed, their indifference more terrifying than any threat.The main deck was a stark contrast to the crowded, frantic mess of weeks past. Survivors stood apart, isolated islands of paranoia in a sea of weathered planks. A palpable, hostile distance was maintained between each individual and each small cluster. Hard, predatory eyes constantly scanned, assessing every movement. Weapons were never still—a silent, continuous advertisement of lethal readiness.Anyone who had endured this long possessed a hidden, ruthless edge. The weak, the slow, the unlucky, were all gone. Those who remained were a hardened elite, forged in a crucible of relentless brutality.The daily hunt began. Teams of apprentices circled o

The air on the foredeck was thick with a tension that had become as familiar as the salt spray. Lafey arrived last, her presence a cold current in the stifling atmosphere. Her expression was, as ever, an impenetrable mask of frost."Lafey. We've been waiting. Sit here."The invitation came from a handsome apprentice named Byron, whose overly large scholar's robes failed to hide a calculated posture. His smile was warm, almost tender, and it seemed to have a dizzying effect on a young woman sitting beside him. He possessed the same striking, magnetic beauty as Lafey.Lafey ignored him completely. She dropped unceremoniously onto a bare patch of deck well away from him, the elegance of her features at odds with her dismissive posture. She fixed the smirking apprentice with a glacial stare. "Do I know you?"The young man's charming smile vanished, replaced by a cold sneer. "You... The rumors are true. You have a viper's tongue.""Seeking death?" Lafey

Time became a slow, grinding torture aboard the sea-worn vessel. Each dawn was a descent into a personalized hell, a ritual of bloodshed mandated by a terrifying authority. Every soul aboard prayed for the journey’s end, for a reprieve from the morning’s grim tally. The initial shock and outrage had calcified into a cold, daily routine of survival.A rigid, unspoken hierarchy solidified on the ship, a dark mirror of the world they were entering.The apex, the absolute ruling class, consisted of the Faceless Mask Sorcerer, the boatswain, Suolangmu, Yunli, and Bibiliangna. These were the masters of their fate, their only duties to count the living each morning and distribute the pitifully limited rations of bland mushrooms. Their power was absolute, their motives inscrutable. They existed on a different plane, observing the struggles below with detached amusement or utter indifference.The second tier was comprised of the dozen sailors and the small, elite groups

A raw, indignant shout cut through the oppressive air on the main deck, a futile protest against the new, brutal arithmetic governing their lives. “This is an outrage! A dozen of them? Just a dozen filthy sailors, and they demand we kill five of our own each day?”The speaker, a sorcerer’s apprentice with more passion than sense, slammed his steel blade into the weathered deck planks with a loud thud. The wood splintered under the force, a testament to his strength, but the display earned him mostly scornful glances. The sailors who had delivered the ultimatum were long gone; this was a performance for an audience of his terrified peers, a show of bravado when the real threat had departed.Despite their disdain, the nearly four hundred apprentices instinctively clustered together, a fractured and panicked mass united only by a common enemy. In their hearts, each one clung to a deep-seated sense of superiority. They were apprentices of the arcane, touc