F-Rank Mimic Chest: My SSS Mimic Skill Lets Me Become Anything

The cart took Toma’s ring upstairs.

Its wheels crossed the annex joint and climbed toward the Bone Archive. Tin gave one note above the axle. Red thread slid through the black seal on Dane’s tag until the claim line went slack. The seal stayed fused around both ownership nails.

The ring’s place inside him was empty.

Hunger nosed under Toma’s torn glove and scarf, worried the five shallow coppers, then reached deeper toward the thin silver and square-holed red-string coin. One copper still held Nate’s return charm away from Saint Rust’s knife.

His reopened tongue cut burned. The right gum throbbed, and each settling movement pulled at his splintered rim and crooked left hinge.

Something broad scraped down the stair ahead of Grib’s open-mouth breathing. Nails clicked in a cup. A plank struck the wall beside Dane, followed by the bitter smell of fixing salts and crushed lantern fungus.

”The larger tray was not approved,” Grib said. Cloth rasped over the handle, and old blood scented the movement. ”Management prefers an improvement that hangs on a wall.”

The brush dragged across wood.

”Faulty treasure chest,” Grib read as he painted.

The wet brush returned for a shorter line.

”Premium recovery potential.”

Inside Dane, Saint Rust shifted the knife vessel against bare wood.

”They have fastened your wound to the route,” he said.

Grib set the painted plank against the wall. The first hammer blow passed through stone and jumped Dane’s split front rim; the seal cinched around both tag nails and drove ownership heat into his hinge. The second blow found the same pain from another angle.

”Faulty is better than broken,” Grib said while he worked. ”Broken costs labor. Faulty means somebody competent stopped before finding the valuable part.”

Nell had stopped because she was competent.

Dane pushed one deliberate movement through the route learned from Grib’s hook. His tongue drew back one width and split the cut. He bore down through the front rim until hardened resin ground against living grain.

His body corrected him with heat in all five coppers, thicker treasure scent, and varnish pulling across the stressed lid. The tag nails turned his sagging rim into display. The seal burned hotter whenever he held the damage low.

Grib stopped hammering.

”The lock is crooked, the resin is showing, and you still smell expensive.” His brush touched the plank again. ”Hold that.”

Dane’s tongue slid against fresh blood. A second controlled withdrawal would tear the cut wider. The lure kept the coins warm.

/==[ Brackenvault: Valuation ]==\

| Surface: Cracked / Irregular

| Avoidance: Rebranded

| Rumor: Attached

| Interest: Specialist

\==[ Specialist Interest Increased ]==/

A tired scavenger might walk past the crack. A specialist would return with measurements, wards, and a prying tool.

The route door scraped open.

Chain links touched stone and drew tight while two spear butts settled at different distances, all beyond Dane’s closing range.

Skek’s breathing stayed by the wall for a moment. ”Stupid.”

Grib tapped the brush against his cup. ”Admiration can stay home. I need the story to travel.”

Paper crackled as he separated three narrow slips.

”Goblin Warren Mouth. East Drain. Upper salvage chalk. Your patrol already passes all three.”

Skek’s chain moved once. ”You want my people to carry your words because paper remembers the hand that wrote it.”

”I want it moving at the speed of lunch.”

One of the spear carriers shifted his iron-capped shaft. Skek silenced the movement by drawing one link hard across the floor.

”When your information brings a mage,” Skek said, ”my two stand between the stair and whatever the mage wakes. What do they receive before you start counting corpses as output?”

Grib’s brush went still.

”Ordinary patrol share on equipment recovered outside the annex. I certify the old threshold, wherever the paint splashes. The room keeps what reaches the room.”

Skek dragged a link across stone. ”Rules improve when somebody else carries the spear.”

”Tell them it coughed up a wedding ring,” he said. ”Married delvers will come running.”

Dane’s lid loaded before thought reached it.

Both ownership nails pulled. His raw tongue rose. The black seal heated hard enough to sting, and one of the free coppers jumped against his lockplate.

Chain snapped taut outside his teeth.

Grib struck the carrier’s wrist or the object in it; flesh slapped metal, and the paint cup rocked without falling.

”No ring.” Grib’s voice had lost its public width. ”Specifics create claims. Claims create forms. Forms bring Kett.”

Fresh air struck Dane’s cut gum as the lid lifted. The carrier’s wrist had been close enough for sweat and living heat to cross the gap. Skek hauled him backward with the chain; the spear cap scored stone, and the heat thinned. Dane’s spent tongue route left the body to settle on distance alone. His lid came down one painful fraction at a time.

The loose spear sleeve stopped clicking.

Skek let the silence hold until Grib put the first paper into a waiting hand.

”My patrol gives directions,” Skek said. ”We promise nothing. Outside the old threshold means outside.”

Grib folded the edge of one slip. ”The old threshold stays in the note.”

”Say the routes again.”

Grib did. Paper brushed armor and chain. Boots separated at the door: two toward East Drain and Warren Mouth, Skek toward the stair.

His crack had sent Nell away. Grib had given it three roads back to him.

The last chain link cleared the threshold.

From the stair, paper rasped against armor until stone swallowed the sound.

***

Vera Pike read the amendment with Toma’s treatment sheet open beneath it.

Wet wool, lamp soot, and damp bodies crowded the guild hall. At the main desk, a miner insisted his goat should not be billed as spell equipment for learning one lightning trick. The goat objected from the rain yard.

The amendment carried a fixing-salt thumbprint at one edge and three different kinds of grit in the fold. Someone had copied the same two lines from the dungeon plank.

`FAULTY TREASURE CHEST.`

`PREMIUM RECOVERY POTENTIAL.`

`Selected personal metal expelled under witness. Contents unresolved. Specialist review advised.`

The notice left the metal unnamed.

Vera put her finger under `contents unresolved` before Tess could lean any closer.

”Premium,” Tess said. ”They want someone who can afford to be curious.”

Her thumb remained hooked inside Ash Company’s coin pouch.

Brant pulled Toma’s treatment sheet from under the notice and flattened the drawing of two attached, bandaged left fingers.

”We entered without a hinged hook,” he said. ”He came out needing this. Buy the distance first. Then decide what the chest meant.”

Brother Holt reached over and turned the sheet so the written sequence faced Vera.

”The bite came first. Release came before Toma pulled free. If we shorten that to either attacked or spared, we change what happened.”

Tess hooked a thumb toward the amendment. ”Someone downstairs has already changed it into premium.”

Vera took out the scrap slate from their last visit. Four lines crossed its surface.

Toma’s hand entered; teeth caught two fingers; pursuit slowed; he came away bleeding and alive. The chest stopped before an injured goblin cleared the east crack. Beneath those lines, Vera added the refusal heat around an old return charm and the unknown personal metal expelled under witness.

She rubbed the word `mercy` from the corner of the slate. Dust darkened the side of her hand.

”What does the amendment prove?” she asked.

Brant kept his palm on the treatment sheet.

”That staff want another party close enough to find out.”

Holt traced the wound order. ”They can advertise the response. Its cause is still open.”

Tess’s fingertips met Vera’s across the notice and withdrew. ”They saved the object’s name for whoever pays to look.”

Vera turned to the request slate before anyone reconciled the three versions. The supply clerk pointed out the irregular-mimic deposit. Its number pulled Tess’s thumb from the coin pouch. Brant read it, then looked at the sealed letter inside Vera’s coat.

”Is Thorne choosing this job?” he asked.

The patron seal pressed through the lining. Approved work could loosen his house’s hold on her license. Another injured companion would tighten it.

Brant slid Toma’s sheet over the letter’s outline. ”Tell us what you want from the room.”

”One response with every hand outside its mouth.”

”Then write the stop before the equipment.”

She wrote four entrants: Vera, Brant, Tess, Holt. Toma remained outside.

The supply list came next: three coils of rope; one hinged salvage hook; binding chalk; two ward crystals; one pole mirror; lamp oil; spare gloves.

Tess touched the empty line beneath the list. ”Canvas sack.”

”Use your own silver.”

Brant moved the slate back toward himself.

”If the lid comes for someone, I break the approach.”

”Catch the lid first. Smash only on my mark, from outside the bite line.”

He added a blunt hook beside his name. That was as close as Brant came to signing an argument.

Holt read the entry conditions while Vera wrote them: mage lead, movement order witnessed, no hand contact, no test object moved without being named first. If anyone crossed her chalk without her order, the whole party withdrew.

”And if something inside is choosing?” he asked.

Vera stopped with the stylus on the final line.

”Then we still do not know what it is. I will not call this a rescue and walk you into its mouth.”

Holt folded Toma’s treatment sheet along its old crease and returned it to her case.

Vera pressed Ash Company’s account token to the deposit mark. The clerk checked the eight supply lines, counted the four names, and stamped the authorization.

Lord Thorne’s letter remained sealed against her ribs.