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

Wax pressure climbed out of Dane’s ownership tag and laid a second room across his thoughts.

The real cell stayed under him—iron bars, cold stone, the fading smell of Grib’s resin, and Kett’s stylus scratching beyond the route. One dull copper held Vera’s fringe against the damaged root. A second rested behind the front groove. The dirty third coin burned below the intake, unreachable. Clean-token copper and wet wax waited whole beneath his crooked tooth.

Command made distance where none existed, laying out a door, an approach lane, bite radius, and dead ground. Wax supplied color and human shapes inside the construct; it had not returned Dane’s sight.

”Simulation will test kill-command routing without expending licensed delvers,” Kett said.

/==[ Brackenvault System: Feeding Simulation ]==\

| Pattern Set: Pike Party\

| Objective: Kill-command rehearsal\

| Primary Trigger: Mage proximity\

| Secondary Trigger: Rogue contact\

| Reward: Compliance upgrade pending\

==[ Practice Room: Teeth First ]==/

Four shallow figures occupied the approach lane. They carried Vera’s chalk, Brant’s shield, Tess’s pick, and Holt’s prayer mark. Nothing breathed. The black-wax route pressed one forward and thinned the other three until only their waiting positions remained.

Vera’s copy divided the floor with chalk and tested each square before advancing. The caution was convincing. So was the angle along Dane’s damaged left side.

Then the copy committed to the next step on a fixed count.

Real Vera checked where another person stood before she made danger move. Dane knew it from boots pausing for Holt’s cord, from her asking Brant for the order of events, from every procedure that changed when somebody else answered. The wax mage asked no one. No one answered.

Mage proximity seized Dane’s split hinge.

He drove pressure into the crooked tooth, reaching for the same delay that had broken Vera’s plate route. Brackenvault had stored that answer. Ownership heat clamped the cracked root and forced the point closer to straight. The clean token ground into his tongue while his lid opened anyway.

The first counter failed.

As the wax hand came for his lockplate, Dane stopped bracing against the dirty coin’s unreachable burn.

Intake heat surged through the raw mouth floor. His tongue cramped sideways. The hinge rose too soon, then stalled; upper and lower teeth struck out of sequence, and the bite closed a thumb’s width from the copy’s wrist.

Chalk marked his inner lid as Vera’s pattern pulled clear and dissolved. The living woman felt nothing. Dane’s left hinge remained lower than before, and the token rocked under a tooth whose root had lost more of its seat.

Through the tag came a hook-shaped pressure. Kett’s stylus scratched once, changing the route before Dane could settle his tongue.

Brant’s copy hit him behind a shield.

The wax rim drove Dane’s lid upward against the lowered hinge. A sword followed through the opening and scored the existing tongue cut with cold command-fire. Pain reached the cracked root before the model shifted the shield from its right hand to its left.

That arm should have been splinted.

Dane caught the shield edge on his right-side teeth and hauled. The copy trusted its impossible left grip, so the whole guard crossed his mouth when Dane twisted the rim. Wax knuckles struck his molars. The sword missed the center of his tongue but dragged its point through the old abrasion on the way down.

His lid closed on the shield edge, buckling the weakened hinge another fraction while token copper hammered the damaged root. Brant’s model folded at the false left shoulder and broke apart before its sword could rise again.

Crossing pressure replaced the hook in Dane’s tag. No voice explained it. Brackenvault pushed Tess through the lane while Brant’s wax was still breaking under Dane’s lid.

Low and pick-ready, she planted both knees inside bite range and leaned her whole weight over the lockplate.

Real Tess always kept an exit in one heel. Dane had heard it in every retreat—one planted point, one ready scrape, weight held back from the prize until she knew who owned the door. Her model carried the appetite and left that heel flat. By the time Dane recognized the error, rogue contact had already fired.

His wounded tongue launched for the copy’s wrist. He tried to turn the loop toward the silver pick, but Brant’s sword line had stiffened the muscle. The tongue caught wax skin first. Hunger clenched hard enough to pull.

For one pulse, the kill order had the wrist it wanted.

Dane smashed his tongue against the lockplate. The pick punched into the existing cut and tore along it as the wax hand followed. He curled around the tool, crushed it against brass, then flung the broken route sideways. Tess’s model stumbled after both hands and cleared the teeth before Dane’s lid could complete the bite.

The copy dissolved with its wrist intact. Dane kept the widening cut, a tongue slower to curl, and hunger furious over prey it had touched without feeding.

Kett’s stylus hesitated. Box-shaped pressure closed around the crossing trace.

/==[ Brackenvault Registry: Fault Pattern Review ]==\

| Delayed Feed: Repeating\

| Target Variance: Recognized\

| Compliance Upgrade: Unstable\

| Refusal Category: Under Review\

==[ Wax: Looking For Intent ]==/

The panel classified what the first three trials had exposed. It granted Dane nothing.

Holt was already kneeling a palm and two fingers outside Dane’s rim when the wax cleared.

The copy’s mace lay beyond reach. Empty hands faced Dane. Prayer warmth settled over the lockplate while the named order slackened his lid and forced the established Sound Lure route through his brass bands. The hurt noise behind the lock was Brackenvault’s command, not Dane’s chosen voice.

One wax palm advanced. Holt’s model carried mercy without the questions, party judgment, or retreat that made the living man stop.

Dane waited for the missing question to break its timing.

It kept coming.

His second idea failed with the first. The offered palm reached one finger’s width from the rim. The kill order held his wounded tongue low, kept the crooked teeth hidden, and made his split hinge sag like weakness.

”Spoil the lie,” Saint Rust said.

Dane stopped trying to look harmless.

He wrenched the damaged hinge open. Misaligned teeth punched out in uneven ranks, scraping splinters from each other. His wounded tongue slapped the lockplate, turning the forced whimper into a metal crack that promised exactly what waited inside.

The wax palm stopped outside the rim.

Ownership pressure drove the tooth toward a clean feeding angle. Dane threw his local force down with it and put the pinned acceptance token between root and command.

Wet wax burst. Clean copper bent around the tooth, held through one grinding pulse, then snapped; one edge cut deeper along the existing tongue line while the other kicked the displaced root sideways.

The construct went white from tag overload. Dane felt no room beyond the pain. His lid crashed shut while both offered palms remained outside the rim. The impact lowered the split left hinge, hammered the ownership tag against his shell, and ground the clean-token fragments beneath the shifted tooth.

Holt’s pattern dissolved whole. No bite completed. No living hand had entered the room.

/==[ Brackenvault Registry: Rehearsal Result ]==\

| Kill Command: Active\

| Compliance: Failed under simulation\

| Acceptance Token: Broken\

| Fault Type: Voluntary refusal suspected\

| Reward: Withheld\

| Field Test: Authorized\

==[ Bad Asset: Prove It On Guests ]==/

The wax room peeled away.

Cold stone returned beneath Dane. Kett’s stylus remained still beyond the bars. In Dane’s mouth, two ordinary coppers had survived within reach. The dirty coin still burned below the intake. Vera’s fringe remained at the cracked root, and shattered clean copper no longer offered the wet-wax route a whole seal.

Four shallow murders had failed. The Pike Party had never entered. For one quiet stretch between Kett’s breaths, the broken token was simply broken.

The promised F-1 body remained withheld. Dane’s real hinge sagged, his tongue would not curl cleanly, and the four-name order kept pulling at every damaged part, but Brackenvault had lost the easiest way to call a forced swallow acceptance.

Kett resumed writing. ”Field confirmation supersedes further rehearsal. Licensed pressure is required.”

Grib’s uneven steps approached with burned-honey resin scent behind them. ”Tell me the chest learned manners.”

The ownership tag heated before Kett answered.

Field authorization traveled out along the Old Storage Route, searching the public layer for licensed pressure already touching the dungeon. It found an active return-charm distress line. Familiar copper, a testing hook kept outside the bite line, and the scrape of a written withdrawal returned through the route as old trace rather than memory.

Milo had tested Dane’s danger, verified the coin, written the exit, and backed away under control when older delvers wanted to rush. Dane had given him one survivable opening. The same route now carried Milo’s missing signal.

The field order joined that active signal to the licensed party already marked as Dane’s witness risk. Black wax pressed from staff record into the public guild layer.

/==[ Public Guild Notice: Rescue Contract ]==\

| Missing: Milo Trent, trainee delver\

| Last Tag: Brackenvault Floor 2 / Old Storage Route\

| Candidate Match: Pike Party\

| Rescue Clock: Active\

| Route Change: Authorized after entry\

==[ Mercy Routed To Teeth ]==/

Grib’s answer died in his throat.

Milo’s live clock now sat in front of the four adults Brackenvault had taught Dane’s mouth to kill. Once they entered, the route could move beneath them.

Under Dane’s tongue, one free copper held Vera’s fringe against the cracked root while the other braced the shattered token away from the intake. The dirty coin burned below both. His weakened hinge pulled toward the sealed door as the Old Storage Route began unlocking itself around Milo’s signal.