Lockkeeper

The Order has created tens of thousands of modified Reapers since its founding, yet those earning "Class A" status remain exceedingly rare. Born before the ranking system existed, the Chained One holds no formal grade, yet indisputably surpasses even the deadliest Class A Reapers in sheer power.

Curiously, almost no one within The Order knew of this terrifyingly potent Ghost Messenger, nor where he operated. Perhaps that secret died alongside Mu Tianmiao, sealed forever as an unsolvable mystery...?

Rather than relying on martial mastery, the Lockkeeper fights with horrifying body modifications. His solitary mechanical 'keyhole' eye discharges a devastating laser beam capable of piercing through any barrier to incinerate his target directly.

Moreover, his headlock device can be detached to bind an adversary's movements in an eerie, supernatural hold. Paralyzed and defenseless, the victim can only watch in horror as twin crushing fists come down, reducing them to pulp.

Apart from relying purely on bare fists, the Shackle-bearer has no special tricks—save for an immense, terrifying reservoir of brute strength.

A tragic wretch from birth: his pregnant mother was struck with the lethal Curdling Night Purple poison. Expected to perish together, she instead delivered a microcephalic freak prematurely.

Doctors dismissed the deformed infant as doomed before ten, urging him be discarded. Yet his father fed him goat's milk daily, loving him through a sickening, inexplicable dread with every glance.

As the deformed child grew, his appearance became ever more grotesque. Unable to bear it, his father abandoned the brain-atrophied boy by the roadside. Staring with his lone eye at his father's receding back, he seemed doomed to freeze to death in the howling wind.

Locked in a pitch-black dungeon, this simpleton—aware only of base survival—was pampered by Mu Tianmiao with lavish banquets and lustrous silks. Round the clock, he was bombarded with wealth and beauties while unceasing dark murmurs clawed at his mind.

Gradually, the raw desires within him were unearthed—craving glittering wealth and fine delicacies, drowning in greed, lust, anger, and obsession. He learned to speak and convey his wants, yet his stubby arms could only flail hopelessly at temptations forever out of grasp.

Lost in endless bewilderment, he realized his severed head had been replaced with stone rubble inside his hollow torso, a massive lock hanging from his neck. What few brain cells and single eye remained were embedded inside this padlock, cradled in his own hands. His consciousness unfurled into boundless expanse, leaping across dimensions and shifting modes of thought—his mind had long surpassed human bounds, shedding mortal comprehension forever.

The wretch had no memory of his own face, though he presumed it must be hideous. A silhouette lurking in the gloom christened him 'The Shackler'—a grim title he was doomed to carry for the rest of his days.

Transformed into a Locker, the simple-minded youth underwent a total metamorphosis, viewing mortal existence as fleeting illusion and all worldly splendor as dirt. Wielding cosmic locker powers to seal space and peer across time and reality, the vistas laid bare before his once-simple mind far surpass mortal imagination.

Then came the day the dungeon doors swung open, welcoming an inmate radiating suffocating, tempestuous Killing Intent. Only a solitary wall separated them—yet by order of the dark silhouette, this barrier remained inviolable, robbing the captive of any chance to test his mettle against the master beyond.

The Shackle Warden channeled his sheer willpower to manifest an illusory dimension, waging a relentless psychic war against the master. Within that dark realm of slaughter, the opponent transformed into a black-winged demon ravaging the Warden's psyche, while the Warden erected successive cages to entrap and crush the fiend.

Decades drifted by without a victor, nor would there ever be one. Both found rare solace in their ceaseless duel—the sole pastime keeping them sane while trapped forever in this bottomless dungeon. For that reason, neither combatant ever delivered a killing stroke or sought to break the other's mind.

Yet perhaps this ceaseless war might one day conclude—either through one of them succumbing to old age, or when an unwitting third soul dares set foot into this fathomless abyss.

On the eighteenth day of the seventh month, Year 40 of The Order, the Chained One sensed a new presence infiltrating the area—one bearing an uncanny resemblance to the imprisoned Master of Dark Demon Fortress.

A surge of wild exhilaration seized the Lockkeeper. His miserable fate of rotting away deep underground was finally shattered. No matter what fate lay ahead, he vowed to pour his entire soul into the one true battle of his lifetime.