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

Stone struck the channel. The slab bounced once on trapped grit, settled, and took the corridor air with it.

The cold pressure Vera had drawn across the room thinned away. Dane held his lid shut. Moderate command pressure followed her fading footfalls through the wall, searching for a wrist it could no longer reach.

Five shallow coppers crowded the presentation groove when his mouth floor flexed. Deeper inside, the thin silver pressed the square-holed coin against its red string. Toma’s stiff glove dragged the scarf scrap across Nate’s return charm until the brass nudged Saint Rust’s knife. The room had an answer for every object: display it, bait with it, make the living come back for it.

Dane kept all of them inside.

Brant’s hook dragged over the far side of the slab. The iron carried his order better than his voice.

”Mark the hall. Upper post by the service--”

His next steps left the track. Stone ate the middle.

”--active intelligence hazard. Better-equipped crew decides containment or destruction.”

Three loose weights knocked inside a loop of chain. The short sword rang thin. The cleaver answered low. The skinning knife slid until Holt caught the bundle against his leg.

”Still three,” Holt said. ”The knife keeps working out of the chain.”

Tess’s lighter step moved ahead of him. ”If our report says the chest can think, our names travel with it. I prefer blame with an advance.”

The cleaver dropped half a link.

”Take the sword,” Holt said.

Her boot turned back. Holt pulled the bundle close before she reached it.

”No. Sorry.” Chain tightened around all three edges. ”Just stop pricing it while I am carrying the price.”

Brant’s hook struck a floor joint. Rats stopped scratching somewhere beyond the old pipe.

”Walk,” he said. ”The patrol had friends.”

Behind Dane, the left latch lifted a fraction and dropped. Three claw rhythms resumed at the lever, no longer arguing about how it worked. The party moved faster when the sound reached the corridor.

Four footfall patterns moved away. Words blurred as they left the slab track, then sharpened when someone crossed the pipe running behind Dane’s room. He felt consonants through its cracked collar and lost them again two strides later.

Vera found the collar first.

”No sale. We restrict the room, report the observed response, and request licensed review.”

Tess answered from farther down the corridor. ”Licensed review means a sealed cart, then--”

A metal door slammed against its stop. Hot air pushed through the lower seam, carrying wet rust and old grease. Brant swore. His hook scraped high, searching for a catch while Tess’s boots skidded.

”Hold the staff hatch,” he ordered. ”If it opens another hand, we find out what uses it.”

Tess’s next words arrived between hinge blows. ”Cart. Ward crew. Disposal clerk. Maybe a noble who wants an awake chest beside the wine. Your license hands that choice to them.”

”You chose a collector underneath my seal,” Vera said. ”You put a recovery code there.”

The hatch drove Tess back a fraction. Leather squealed against stone.

”I did.”

Vera waited. The pipe dripped twice.

Tess added, ”I should have told you before anyone else found it.”

Brant’s hook found the latch with a hard click. ”You invited someone into a room we were closing.”

”Yes.”

Holt shifted the chained blades and kept all three edges against his own leg.

”What did you invite?” Vera asked.

”A Candle Row collector. She buys cursed tools before disposal claims settle. Damage lowers the resale, so she keeps valuable pieces intact.”

Holt’s breath reached Dane through the chain ring. ”Does the case open from the inside?”

Tess missed her answer because the hatch struck again. Brant drove his shield edge into the gap; the impact carried through pipe and track and made Dane’s split hinge grind.

”Tess,” Holt said.

”Every case I’ve seen opens from the hall. Push on three.”

They pushed. Wood and iron protested together. The hatch seated far enough for Brant’s hook to catch its outer ring.

”Move before it changes its mind,” Brant said.

The company crossed another joint one at a time. Holt set the weapon bundle down, dragged it over, and lifted it again. The chain snagged the knife twice. Dane heard Tess start to say something about lawful ash. The short sword slipped, Brant barked for hands off the seam, and the sentence never came back.

Past the joint, Brant found a maintenance tooth standing proud of the floor. His hook pressed it down from arm’s length. A door farther along the route unlatched, breathed once, and shut again without being touched.

”That door opened itself,” he said. ”Move.”

Vera let them clear the joint before she asked, ”Who owns your way out?”

Tess’s pace shortened. ”Leave the name out. The creditor has ears in respectable places. Brackenvault may have better ones.”

”Then tell me what the debt does.”

For several steps Tess gave Vera nothing. Her boot struck a loose bolt and sent it spinning along the wall.

”I grew up over a debt kitchen. The slate hung beside the stove. I learned my numbers from what we owed. Meals went on it. Work paid the interest.”

The pipe lost her as she walked past it.

Brant tested another joint. Holt counted the three blades under his breath.

Tess came back into the pipe’s reach. ”The stair locked from outside after dark. She called that shelter. Still charged us for the room. We slept upstairs and smelled tomorrow’s soup. That was meant to make us grateful.”

Vera’s staff ferrule touched stone once. ”Your collector keeps objects intact because intact objects sell. What prevents the next sale?”

”Nothing.”

Water moved through the wall sluice. Nobody hurried to cover the answer.

Vera’s next step came toward Tess, then stopped. The staff hatch hammered once behind them. Brant held it with the hook and waited for an order instead of filling the silence.

Holt’s bundle slipped again. Tess stepped toward the chain. His heel cut across her approach, and the metal moved to his far side.

”I’ve got it,” he said.

Tess stopped helping.

The company moved six more paces before she said, ”The guild route can end at the same furnace. Mine stays outside it. That is all I am claiming.”

Brant drove his hook beneath a warped plate. ”Your creditor closes the road when they want. Then we’re delivering the chest for them.”

Holt worked a chain link off the sword guard. ”Can it refuse either delivery?”

Tess had no fast answer for him.

Vera’s voice reached the pipe. ”What do you think the chest wants?”

”Nobody has offered it a vote.”

The last word entered Dane through the black nail in his side.

His mouth floor tightened. His body supplied a tag hammered straight, meals at fixed bells, dependable hands bringing warm prey, a keeper deciding when the lid opened. The arrangement promised food and fewer chances to say no.

/==[ Brackenvault Registry: External Claim Watch ]==\

| Trigger: Witness Monetization

| Asset: Responsive Mimic Chest

| Claim Sources: Dungeon / Guild / Private Buyer

| Vote Status: Not Applicable

| Containment Value: Increased

\==[ Property: Attracts Owners ]==/

Dane pinned his cut tongue between the five shallow coppers and the presentation gutter. He would give them no second answer.

The nail clenched.

Pain bowed one mouth board. His tongue jerked away from it, nudging the nearest copper into the old groove. The coin rolled a finger’s width, tapped Dane’s inner rim once, and settled beside the other four.

The note passed through wood, into the ring beneath his base, and out along the cracked pipe.

Every footstep stopped.

Brant planted his shield. ”Room.”

Holt lowered the blades without letting the chain loosen. ”It came after the vote.”

”It came after a word,” Brant said. ”That tells us when. Nothing else.”

His hook returned over the stone joints toward the slab.

Vera stepped nearer the pipe. ”The ring can carry corridor sound back into that room. We are standing beside its route. No private discussion here.”

Tess’s steps reversed.

”Stay in formation,” Brant said.

She kept coming until the slab track carried her full weight. Her voice reached Dane torn at the edges.

”Chest. The guild may break you because that is cheaper. My collector keeps dangerous things whole because whole things sell.”

The wall swallowed several words. Tess shifted closer.

”She may feed you. She may sell you after. I can get you past the guild. After that, the collector decides. That’s the truth.”

Vera’s staff struck the slab track between them.

”Back away. You’re using the furnace to recruit something that cannot answer you.”

Tess drew breath. Whatever defense she had prepared stayed behind her teeth.

”Tess first,” Brant ordered. ”Holt and Vera behind her. I take the rear. If she turns, say it.”

Holt lifted the three chained blades. Vera’s staff kept time beside him. Tess walked ahead without being asked for another opinion.

Their words broke apart beyond the first turn, but the route still carried work: Brant’s hook checking low, Holt’s uneven load, Vera naming each cleared joint. Tess’s steps stayed at the front.

At the first turn, the staff hatch tore open again, its iron edge striking Brant’s shield while hot air coughed through the pipe.

”Through the turn,” he ordered. ”All three. I have the door.”

Tess passed first. Vera followed. Holt tried to follow and the cleaver haft caught the corner. Chain spilled over stone.

”Hold it,” Holt said. ”The knife is coming out.”

Vera stopped to help him. Brant leaned his shield into the hatch while his hook searched for the ring. Iron shrieked over iron, loud enough to bury a careful footstep.

One light rhythm separated from the others and came back toward Dane, quick enough to shake grit in the slab track. At the slab, Tess pushed a flat metal edge into the lower seam. Cloth rasped over stone. A small wrapped weight followed and stopped inside the room.

Rain reached him first, then smoke and the cheap pepper oil Tess used on her gloves. The metal lay one tongue-length beyond his furthest reach.

”If the clean people come for you first,” she whispered, ”remember who admitted she was dirty.”

Her steps hurried back toward the hatch. A few breaths later the route carried four patterns away together.

Dane stretched until the cut in his tongue reopened. Pepper oil sat in the gap between him and Tess’s offer. The cloth stayed beyond him.