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

The arch rose high enough for one armored body.

”Tess first,” Brant said. ”Don’t stop under it.”

Her light steps crossed the new seam. The bitten glove swung from its copper buckle, and both pieces of cord brushed her boot. Holt followed with the resin wrapped against his slate. Vera went third, holding her closed license case around the crystal’s troubled pulse.

Brant stayed in the room.

The hook hovered over Dane’s split hinge. Its weight entered his lid as a faint iron tremor, steady while Brant backed toward the corridor. One boot found the raised threshold. Then the other. The hook remained ready until his last heel cleared; its iron warning lifted while four heartbeats widened their distance from Dane’s teeth.

The rat had been fully digested. What remained was warmth and a quiet stomach. His boards loosened around the relief; the remembered scream tightened them again. Hunger Debt still worried the hollow behind his lockplate, patient now that it had been fed once.

”Give me ten breaths before this floor changes its mind again,” Vera said.

Metal snapped open. Paper whispered from a flat tin.

Brant kept the hook high. ”Put one where the next fool sees it before the brass.”

”Left pillar, rear wall, and over the arch. Holt, take the first. Tess, the second.” Vera tore wax from a stick with her teeth. ”Read yours aloud.”

Tess pressed paper to stone. ”’Responsive Mimic Hazard. Review pending. Risk of death, property loss, and legal action.’” Cloth rasped over the spot on her boot that still reeked of rat urine. ”Management may survive after all.”

The copper buckle knocked against the wall. Holt kept smoothing the left-pillar slip until its corners stopped whispering.

”Corners flat,” Vera said. Red chalk bit the threshold before Tess finished smoothing them. ”If air slips under the warning, the ward counts it as litter.”

Vera ran one stroke from her route number to the slip above the arch. Red pressure crossed Dane’s lure and bent its pull off the straight approach. The papers crackled.

The corridor draft changed with them. Air that had carried every warm scent straight toward his lockplate divided at the threshold and slid along both walls. His lure reached after it, found Vera’s red boundary, and folded inward. His teeth stayed lethal while the ward kinked the next approach out of an easy line.

Tess flicked one with a nail. It answered like thin wood. ”Teeth on the print went black.”

Vera had already started the second stroke. ”Mage hazard.”

Her case opened. The clouded crystal gave a wavering whine and knocked once against its metal bed. Cold gathered around the chalk, hesitated at Brackenvault’s red line, then held there.

Brant shifted his grip. ”That warns mages. A man with wedges will read it after he gets bored.”

”Then I know which party crossed it.” Vera leaned closer to the stone. ”Keep the hook over the left side. I need room for the curve.”

The third stroke crossed the outer edge of the dungeon’s law.

Cold punched through Dane’s ownership nail.

He clenched his tongue against the floor of his mouth. Vera’s square stamp struck stone. Her voice followed it, quick and exact.

”Pike Unit. Floor Two irregular asset. Entry restricted until witnessed mage review. Guild liability attaches if this seal is broken.”

The red line drank the stamp. Wax smoked over it. Pine rose with hot metal and the clean chemical sting of a hospital corridor.

Vera struck the stone beside her stamp with the seal tin. All three warning slips answered in one hard chime. Brant moved the hook shaft toward the threshold; a spark snapped before the iron reached the chalk.

”It’ll wake them,” he said.

”If it breaks, it leaves me their mark.” Vera sealed the tin. ”That’s the best ten breaths buys us.”

Rain worried the black window beside June’s bed. Her palm rested under his. Then her fingers slipped, and his thumb chased them across the sheet until it struck the hard plastic rail.

Dane’s lid creaked.

Vera’s pulse was closest. Mage-lightning sharpened her scent. Hunger chose the living heat behind it and began raising his lid before thought could get between them.

The hook chain snapped taut above the split.

Dane spent the sliver he owned. He pressed through the cut in his tongue, caught the damaged front rim, and drove all 0.08% into the crooked hinge pin. Pain crossed the three points together, arresting the lid beneath the waiting iron.

”Back,” Vera said. Her boots scraped away from the threshold.

Brant kept his voice low. ”It moved when you leaned in.”

Holt’s slate clicked shut. ”It stopped below the hook.”

”It got close enough that I don’t care.” Brant walked backward beside Vera. ”Lethal goes first on the warning.”

”After the corner.” She gathered the tin without approaching Dane again. ”And quit dragging your heel through my route number.”

Their argument thinned with distance.

Holt’s steps followed. Tess stayed. Her buckle tapped twice near the rear wall while cord rasped through torn leather.

Then chalk scratched stone.

Once. Twice. A third short line.

Lime and old coin reached Dane beneath the pine smoke. The smell carried no mana. Nothing touched his nail. Someone had left a message in a language made for people who arrived with tools.

Holt stopped at the bend. ”What did you put under Vera’s name?”

”A way off this floor.” Tess rubbed her sole over the three scratches.

”You marked him for capture.”

”Recovery.” The buckle clicked into her palm. ”If the guild reaches for its cheapest hammer, recovery needs to hear he’s worth moving intact.”

Dane tried to force sound through a body built to wait. His hinge gave only a soft wooden tick. Neither of them heard an answer in it.

Holt came back several paces. ”The rat is gone, Tess. I can still smell it on your boot. You chose before anyone could stop you in there, and now you’ve hidden an invitation under Vera’s seal.”

For a moment there was only cord winding around cloth.

”The people who know that sign have quiet carts,” Tess said. ”Warded chains. Enough hands to lift him without taking the lid off first.”

At intact, Dane’s teeth eased a fraction from the rim. The first mention of chains brought them back to the wood.

”And what do they do after they lift him?”

She pulled the cord until the buckle squealed. ”They don’t leave him here.”

”Which people?” Holt’s voice roughened. ”Give me one name I can put in front of Vera.”

”Not in this corridor.” Tess scraped her sole across the mark again. ”The guild’s recovery wagon lost a wheel two months ago. The people I know bring iron runners, six backs, and a mage who understands that cargo can bite.”

”They buy cargo too.”

The buckle stayed quiet. Tess rubbed the scuff once more.

Saint Rust scraped once inside the belt-knife vessel.

”Unbroken goods still have owners, cupboard.”

Holt’s coat brushed the warning paper. ”Vera put her license between strangers and that mouth. You used it for cover.”

Tess’s next breath came through her nose. ”If you want me out of Ash Company, tell Brant when the ceiling isn’t trying to bury us.”

”Tell Vera what you drew.”

Vera called from beyond the bend. ”Tess. Holt. Now.”

Tess went. Her steps passed Holt and kept moving.

Holt drew breath. The resin packet crackled in his hand. When Vera called again, that breath left without a word, and his boots followed Tess.

Brant’s measured tread faded first, Vera’s quicker pace after it. Tess’s lighter retreat disappeared next. Holt remained audible longest, every fourth step landing harder than the rest.

The live seal stayed cold across Dane’s threshold. Beneath one warning, the chalk’s sour-metal smell waited for strangers who knew where to look.

* * *

Grib needed both claws to raise the service slit without letting it squeal.

He pushed his wax tablet through first, then his nose. Vera Pike’s three red strokes crossed the threshold exactly where a licensed mage would put them: route, hazard, liability. Her square stamp sat in wax that had blackened at the rim without breaking. All three warnings stood stiff against the stone.

”Bad,” Grib whispered.

He checked the room again and found the pale scuffs beneath the rear-wall slip. Hook. Cup. Line. The little code promised an intact responsive container to anyone in the recovery trade, provided they were willing to argue with a guild seal and whatever owned Floor Two.

”Premium bad.”

His stylus cut four lines into the wax.

Pike Unit contaminated asset response.

Mercy category persists after feed.

Outside recovery interest marked.

Recommend Core attention before guild returns.

Grib copied Pike’s route name from the stamp, checked Dane’s closed lid, and pulled the tablet into the service tunnel. He lowered the slit with both claws until its latch caught.

The report entered the message rail.

Behind Grib, the copper pipe marked PROPERTY knocked behind the stone.