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

Three turns beyond Dane’s slab, Brant’s hook struck a floor joint.

The vibration reached the chain ring beneath Dane. A boot followed with the wrong weight: heel high, toe sinking. The plate’s far edge struck its stop, a counterweight chain ran toward the right wall, and a concealed catch released at rib height.

Vera shouted, "Plate!"

Iron screamed along a horizontal wall track.

Brant crossed the bar’s path without knocking Vera off the plate. His shield took the first blow with a bronze crash that lifted Dane’s five coppers from the mouth-floor. The iron bar kept driving. It sliced the shoulder strap, burst its buckle against the wall, and twisted the shield sideways. Brant’s braced left forearm took what remained. Bone cracked beneath metal with the sound of green wood breaking inside wet cloth.

His knee hit stone. Vera shouted his name. Brant bit a curse into pieces while blood began pattering from the lower rim of his shield.

A pressure gate slammed behind the party.

Dane had no sight of the trap. The old pipe gave him fragments while the floor carried the rest: Vera’s plate grinding under one boot, Brant’s shield scraping across stone, Holt dropping to his knees, Tess dragging chain and goblin steel away from the gate track.

"Left arm," Brant said through his teeth. "Bar caught it below the elbow."

"Keep it against the shield," Holt ordered. "Your bracer split the skin. I need pressure above the edge."

Vera remained on the plate. Every shift of her weight sent a small stone complaint toward Dane’s room. "Tell me whether the bone moved."

Cloth ripped. Brant breathed once, too fast.

"Cracked," Holt said. The pipe flattened the word and left it just as hard. "The bone is contained. Blood is running from the bracer cut, and his fingers are losing color. I need the arm straight before swelling locks it."

"Do it."

"I need the plate held and the gate stopped. If either resets while I set this, the next strike will finish the break."

The gate began to rise.

Stone teeth ground over metal. Tess hauled the weapon bundle open. Short sword, skinning knife, and cleaver knocked against each other while she chose what the dungeon could keep.

"The cleaver is broad enough," she said. "When the gate catches, I wedge the track."

"You lose a hand if it slips," Brant warned.

"Then make the warning useful. Call the teeth."

Brant counted the gate’s climb by shield widths. On his second count, Tess drove the chipped cleaver sideways into the track. The gate dropped half an inch and bit the blade. Rust screamed. The cleaver bent but held.

Vera stepped off the tilted plate.

Nothing fired.

Tess backed away with the short sword and knife still bound in chain. The cleaver remained pinned between stone teeth, its haft angled across the corridor as a warning and a promise the gate could crush at any time.

"Trap held," Vera said. "Holt, set the arm."

Brant’s breath had gone shallow. The pipe carried the scrape of his heel as Vera lowered him against the wall. Holt unlaced the left bracer instead of pulling it across the break. The metal peeled away wetly. Blood ran over the shield face and fell from its rim in quick taps that reached Dane through the floor. Brant made one sound and swallowed the next.

"Skin is split along the rim," Holt reported. "Bleeding is heavy but steady. Pulse below it. He can feel two fingers."

"Three," Brant said.

"Then keep naming them while I work," Holt answered.

Silence held because the blood kept moving. With Vera bracing the shoulder, Holt packed folded cloth against the cut and pressed until Brant’s boots scraped. Tess broke the head from their damaged torch and passed him the straight wooden handle.

"A rigid brace," Holt said. "Now I need a broad binding and a fastener. The shield strap is sliced through, and its buckle went under the bar."

Tess shifted the chained goblin weapons. "Sword and knife are rusted to the edges. Put either against an open cut and we trade a break for rot. The chain will bite through the padding when his arm swells."

"Then search your packs."

Cloth, cord, and metal moved beyond the pipe. Every answer came back wrong: cord too thin, belt already load-bearing, prayer cord too short and ritually treated, scabbard straps cut during the gate strike.

Dane held his lid shut and felt their shortage become a shape.

His tongue searched the mouth-floor behind the three personal items he knew well and Saint Rust’s knife vessel. Near the front gutter, conversion had swallowed the shine from an old brass buckle attached to a handspan of leather. It had come from nameless dungeon gear, old enough that the mouth-floor had begun treating it as reinforcement instead of inventory.

The chest body wanted the brass. Better reinforcement meant a harder lockplate and a cleaner bite. Pulling it free meant losing material Brackenvault had already started calling part of him.

Brant’s blood tapped the corridor floor. The sound came through the pipe one drop at a time.

Dane hooked the buckle with his tongue.

Outward Item Pressure had moved Toma’s ring through a mouth built to keep. The same route remained: tongue under leather, front rim taking weight, tooth holding the strap off the gums. He loaded it without waiting for a new System permission.

One conversion filament ran from the buckle corner into the meat between two floorboards. Dane pulled.

The filament stretched until the ownership nail burned under his side band. Then it tore.

Pain ripped a wet groove across the mouth-floor. The buckle shifted one inch. His body tried to swallow it back and flooded the brass with lure shine.

Dane flattened the buckle in mouth dust. Useful had to look ugly enough for frightened people to touch.

He took two coppers from the five-coin warning set. One wedged the buckle tongue open. The other pinned the leather flat against the rim. Three dull coins remained inside, too few to hold the old pattern.

Tongue, rim, tooth.

The bundle crossed his gums. Brass scraped wood. Leather dragged through the fresh abrasion. Dane opened only enough to force the objects out, then shut before the ownership command could turn the offering into an invitation.

Buckle, strap, and two bent coppers landed near the inner slab seam.

The pipe carried the wet scrape into the hall.

Tess heard it. "Something moved at the chest door."

Brant’s shield struck stone as he tried to rise. Holt forced him back against the wall.

"Nobody goes within opening reach," Brant said. Pain had made his voice quiet. "A listening trap heard us ask for a fastener. That makes the fastener excellent bait."

Vera honored his rule. She extended blue ward light along the chalk path from Chapter 30 and stopped at the hall-side limit. The magic slipped through the lower seam, touched the buckle, and recoiled once from old conversion residue.

"Bounded retrieval," she said. "The lid stays sealed. My hands stay here. Brant keeps strike authority."

The ward drew the bundle under the slab grain by grain. Dane felt cold pressure through leather and brass, never skin. When it reached the hall, Vera held it inside a blue loop above the floor.

"Old leather. Brass buckle. Two coppers. Partial conversion on the buckle corner. No active venom in the ward response."

"Smell is not proof," Brant said.

"Agreed. Holt decides whether the material touches him."

Holt used the time bought by pressure. He wrapped the leather over clean cloth, laid the broken torch handle along the outside of Brant’s left forearm, and used the buckle to draw both together. One bent copper went beneath the buckle tongue as a wedge that locked the damaged fastener.

The other copper stayed on the floor outside the ward loop.

Tess turned it with her knife tip. Both faces were dull. A bright scrape marked the edge where Dane had forced it through his rim.

"Evidence wrap," Vera said.

Tess pushed the copper onto Holt’s spare cloth without touching it. Holt folded the cloth and tucked it beside his prayer case.

He pulled the leather one notch tighter.

Brant’s back struck the wall. Blood welled through the padding, then slowed under the new pressure. His fingers regained color one at a time. Holt tested each fingertip, checked the forearm stayed straight, and tied the leather end away from the open skin.

Only then did Tess speak beyond what the procedure required.

"The chest supplied emergency hardware before the guild supplied hazard pay. I dislike what that says about both institutions."

Holt checked the cloth again. The torch handle held Brant’s arm straight, the buckle held its pressure, and the blood stayed inside the slow-growing stain.

The System opened after the emergency work was done.

/==[ Brackenvault System: Utility Lure ]==\

| Item: Retained Belt Buckle / Partial Conversion

| Presented Function: Splint Fastener

| Lure Value: Increased

| Aid Result: Accepted Under Protest

| Trust Result: Decreased

\==[ Help: Filed As Bait ]==/

Vera released his shoulder only after Holt nodded. "Can you walk?"

"I can walk. Shield work is finished until the bone is bound by more than spite."

Brant rose between Holt and Vera. His left arm stayed fixed to the torch handle, elbow close to his ribs. The shield hung from his right hand now; his hook went to Tess.

"I owe the arm to Vera and Holt," he said toward the pipe. "The chest gets suspicion. A trap that hears a shortage can buy future openings with the correct tool."

Holt picked up the evidence-wrapped copper. "It also gave up partially converted metal and broke its five-coin pattern. It could have listened while you bled."

"That remains motive, not evidence."

"Then we test what can be tested," Vera said. "After we reach the upper post, stabilize the fracture, and clear this pressure route."

Holt’s prayer cord clicked against its case. "A mercy witness. Blood beyond reach, ownership response observed, restraint measured. It may separate training from a will paying costs."

Brant looked at the cleaver bending inside the gate. "You will conduct no ritual beside a trap that has already taken my arm."

"Agreed," Vera said. "We rest first. We return with the door sealed, the lid closed, and withdrawal marked."

Tess took Brant’s hook. Holt gathered the short sword and skinning knife. Vera supported Brant on his uninjured side, and the party moved toward the upper post. His steps came unevenly through the pipe, but they continued.

Inside Dane’s mouth, three coppers lay where five had once made a warning. The abrasion beneath the missing buckle pulsed with every footfall.

The last System line remained bright after the rest faded.

Help: Filed As Bait.