More Efficient Curses

Disclaimer: This story explores concepts including spells that self-harm, abusive situations, extreme psychological stress, and body horror. There will be no explicit sexual content. In a world where talent is inherited at birth, a young boy finds himself without an elemental core or a means to survive. He has one out: the weakest most useless branch of magic anyone can use. Fortunately, magic academy attendance is required of all children in the empire up to military age, and this means free lunch. Unfortunately, with no elemental capabilities he will have to move forward with the weakest magic that anyone can use - curse arts. But no one uses curse arts. Curse arts burn the caster's life like gun powder instead of using an element core, and are widely considered weak compared to the elemental arts. With magic that threatens his very own well-being, the most powerful curses must be reserved for emergencies, providing he lives long enough to discover them. In contrast, most magic users simply snap their fingers and will a fireball. Curses require writing glyphs in the air. To make matters worse, an inaccurate performance can have unpredictable results. While practicing a silence curse on freshly captured rat, the young boy accidentally reverses the curse, and grants speech to the rodent. Of all the things a rat could say, he introduces himself: Lord Grumble the Thirteenth. This bossy aristocratic rat might be arrogant, but coaches his new peasant retainer in the curse arts in exchange for cheese nibbles. They are to die for. What to expect: Progression: A weak nobody to surviving, with risky abilities. Fairly slow progression. Dark humor: A starving boy and a pretentious rat, trying to make it in a rough world with much bickering Hard magic system: A poorly documented magic system. The boy must discover the glyph weaving skills on his own, with some help from his noble rat friend System Interface: Terminal style, no emphasis on stats, with only a few skills other than the curses he can figure out Cheese Nibbles: My god the things they will do for cheese nibbles