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

Brant kept the hook at striking height.

Its haft flexed in his grip. His rear boot worried the same floor seam until grit crunched beneath the heel. Through those small pressures, Dane could follow the blow waiting above his split left hinge.

The hooked point would punch into the torn channel first. One pull would peel the lid backward past its stop. If the pin held, the wrench would twist Dane’s whole left side; if it failed, the lid would tear loose with the tongue thrashing beneath it. Brant could stamp the loose lid flat, turn the hook, and drive the straight back-spike through the opened mouth toward whatever counted as a core.

Dane’s body understood the method. It tightened around the hidden Saint Rust vessel and flooded his teeth, eager to catch Brant during the first pull. His human mind understood the second stroke.

”Smash,” he said. ”It learned the hook. The next crew won’t bring one.”

Tess drew the cut cord through one fist. The false glove scraped between the inner mark and outer arc, buckle knocking against stone. ”You made that decision before Vera called the vote.”

”I made it when the mouth followed Pike after the spell stopped. The vote decides whether I swing.”

Vera’s crystal tapped once against the floor. ”Then keep the point clear while we decide.”

Brant eased the hook down an inch. It remained above Dane’s wood, close enough that its iron smell sat sharp over old resin.

The movement brought Brant’s forward hand lower. Between gauntlet and cuff, Dane’s prey sense caught a bare strip of wrist. His body found the pulse before his thoughts found June.

Salt warmed where the cuff had rubbed the skin. The lure measured the small distance from lockplate to wrist and offered his tongue a path under the hook’s curve. Bite there, pull hard, use Brant’s own grip to drag the arm between the teeth.

The offered path pulled his lid a nail-width upward, drawing the hook after it without contact.

Dane burned his 0.08% interval. He dragged his tongue backward across its own cut. Wet flesh caught on the lockplate, tore free, and recoiled behind his teeth. At the same time, he forced his front rim up against the lid and made it settle.

The crooked pin ground through its old channel. Pain ran from brass to mouth, but no fresh grain gave way.

His mouth kept the shape of the missed attack. Saliva gathered under the tongue. The bare wrist shifted with the hook, and Dane had to keep the wounded flesh pinned behind his own lower teeth.

”Tongue back first,” Holt said. The words came close together, stripped of his usual ceremony. ”Front rim forced the lid down. Hook tracked after. No contact.”

Something hard ticked off Dane’s hinge and skipped across the floor.

Brant’s boot loaded the seam. ”It still opened toward my hand.”

Holt’s beads clicked. ”It opened toward you. It also withdrew before the hook reached it.”

”Then don’t turn restraint into innocence.”

Holt crouched beyond the outer arc. He covered the flat lid of his prayer case with an unused strip from his wound roll and pushed it over the chalk.

”Case only,” Brant said.

”My hand stays here.”

The hook shifted above the moving case. Holt paused while Brant’s rear boot ground into a new angle, then nudged the linen under the fallen chip. His fingers and boots stayed outside the mark. He drew the case back and folded the clean cloth around the flake.

”Old resin,” he said. ”Cured through. No fresh wood attached.”

”A trap can stop when it hears the spring creak.”

”It can.” Linen whispered as Holt secured the fold. ”I cannot tell you why it stopped. I can swear that it did, and that the cost came through an injury already there. Break it now and my oath becomes a story about fragments. My vote is containment.”

Dane’s lid settling had tilted the five shallow coppers near his mouth. One coin rang against a tooth and rolled farther in. The other four stayed where hunger had drawn them.

Tess stopped pulling the cord.

”Five at the front before,” she said. ”Four now.”

”It hid bait,” Brant replied.

”The lid tipped it. I heard the whole roll.”

”You want the chest whole.”

The cord tightened. Leather dragged until the glove’s buckle caught in a groove, and Tess had to ease it free instead of yanking.

Her first pull only wedged it tighter. The next came sideways, patient despite the quick leather creaks from her gripping hand. Dane remembered those fingers inside his mouth and the instant his teeth had taken the glove instead. Hunger remembered the rest of her arm.

”Yes,” she said. ”A collector will pay for a living irregularity. You wanted honesty. There it is.”

Brant waited.

Tess rewound the loosened cord around her palm. ”The first claim crew sent after that payment won’t look like us. They’ll bring porters from the gate, hand each one a pry bar, and call lost fingers a hiring expense. Smashing this might save them. It might also erase the only warning they’ll believe.”

”So which risk are you choosing?”

The buckle came free with a scrape. Tess drew the glove back until the intact length of cord lay outside the outer arc. ”Containment. I take the glove and both cord pieces out myself. Nobody sells the find before the hazard seal reaches the guild.”

”And if your private buyer offers before dawn?” Brant asked.

Tess’s glove rasped hard over the cut end. ”Ask me after dawn. Tonight, the evidence goes to Vera.”

Brant’s wrist remained bright in Dane’s prey sense. The tongue pressed against the back of his teeth, found the raw cut, and stayed there.

Vera opened her license case. Its hard leather edge struck the stone, then the metal latch clicked under her thumb.

”The tongue went back before your hook touched,” she said. ”That is the part I can put under my name. I don’t know why. I won’t call it safe.”

”Safe isn’t on offer,” Brant said.

Her license token clicked into its slot. ”I order this room barred, request a mage lock, and file an urgent irregular asset and hazard seal. My vote is containment.”

”The guild refuses the seal?”

”I stay at the route mouth and turn parties back until they suspend me or send the lock.”

The crystal strap trembled against stone, quieted, then trembled again.

The hook remained poised over the split.

”Add my threshold,” Brant said. ”First movement toward a body, I break the hinge. I swing before contact. Blood is too late.”

The crystal strap rasped twice while Vera measured that condition and shifted it closer to the open case.

”The seal will say that,” she said. ”Until a guild team takes control.”

Brant let out one breath through his nose.

”Majority holds.”

His rear boot moved off the striking seam. The haft rotated in both hands, and the hook descended from killing height to guard height without striking Dane’s lid.

”Tess, glove and cord. Holt, the resin. Pike, crystal and license case. I leave last. Keep your boots outside every mark, face the mouth, and treat it as a live trap.”

”My case is already on the floor,” Vera said.

”Then pick it up when I tell you.”

Holt tucked the wrapped flake inside his coat. Tess gathered the second piece of cord, keeping both lengths loose around her gloves. For one breath, every boot stayed planted.

Brant tested the guard position with a short draw. The hooked point passed over Dane’s split and stopped where it could catch the lid without driving into the old damage. His wrist moved farther from the lockplate. Dane’s lure redrew the path anyway, adding the haft, Brant’s forward knee, and the floor seam where a hard opening might spoil his balance.

Dane held his tongue behind the lockplate. The earlier withdrawal had left the cut stuck to one tooth. Each vibration from Brant’s shifting grip tried to peel it forward again.

The vote ended. Hunger kept the bare wrist warm.

The black ownership nail burned in Dane’s side.

Heat passed from the nail into Grib’s cured resin, then down through Dane’s base and the stone beneath it. Chalk grit whispered around the room as something traveled under Vera’s marks. Her crystal rattled against the open license case.

Tess’s recovered buckle struck her boot. Holt’s prayer case snapped shut around the wrapped flake. Farther from Dane’s hinge, another seam crunched under Brant’s heel.

”Red line,” Vera said. ”Under the circle. Don’t step across it.”

The heat reached both ends of the ownership route and pulled tight. The crystal struck leather once, twice.

”It’s gone white through the center,” Vera said. ”Holt, I can’t see the print.”

Behind the ceiling, a gear engaged. Another answered farther along the corridor. Their teeth turned slowly enough for each impact to enter Dane through the floor.

A panel opened inside him.

/==[ Brackenvault: Asset Integrity ]==\

| External Damage Vote: Detected

| Mercy Deviation: Logged

| Witnesses: 4

\==[ Suppression Pending / Remain In Room ]==/

The panel closed. The gears continued.

Tess’s cord went still. ”Please tell me suppression means paperwork.”

Brant raised the hook toward the ceiling. ”It means the room is about to clean itself.”