A soldier in chain mail scrambled down a stone hallway. “He’s here!” he cried out, hoping anyone would hear him. Behind him, he could hear the barricades collapsing like salt pillars.

He continued running down the hallway, hoping to find another checkpoint. They had already lost 200 men to the Lockpick Hero. What use was armor, anyway, when he could simply instantly remove them? What use was being alive, when he could release one’s soul with just a thought?

Click—was the last thing anyone ever heard.

The soldier finally reached a door, but its intricate carvings of thousands of years of valor and vampiric supremacy sank his hopes. This was the door to the throne room. Commoners were executed for entering it, and even nobles wouldn’t dare enter uninvited. Still, the Queen must be warned!

Death was behind him. Death was in front of him. He knocked on the door, performing his last duty. “My Queen!” he announced. “The Lockpick Hero approaches! Please, make preparations to leave the castle!”—

Someone poked his shoulder. He slowly turned around, feeling Death’s breath on the back of his neck, and he met Death in the eyes.

“P-please don’t kill me,” was all he could muster.

“Hm? Kill you?” the Lockpick Hero said, genuinely confused.

“Y-you killed everyone!”

“I didn’t”—he sighed—“I even sent a letter in advance saying I’ll be arriving, and I even had it checked and edited by a vampire noble. Isn’t that the custom here? It’s not my fault you threw magic at me first.”

W-what? As the Lockpick Hero undid the magic seals on the door, pushing them open, and disappearing into the kingdom’s most hallowed halls, the soldier stood in slack-jawed wonder: Were we in the wrong all along?

Finally, the Lockpick Hero stood face-to-face with the Demon Queen, seated upon her iron throne: Her Majesty, Fraise the Unassailable. He stood before the main reason why this little corner of the world had withstood invasion after invasion by the forces of elves and men, and because of it, he showed her the deference of a sovereign: a bow and a kneel.

“What foolishness,” she said. “You come here, massacre my soldiers, and do this to me? If we are to have a deathmatch, I would prefer it at the earliest convenience.”

“Again, I didn’t kill anyone. I even sent a letter in advance”—

“A veiled threat.”

He eyed an unopened letter at her foot. “Did you even read it?”

She winced so slightly, anyone else could’ve missed it. “Even a foolish monarch wouldn’t need to open it to know as much.”

Instead of that, he focused on the collar around Fraise’s neck. He needed to get on her good side so she could call over the Demon Sage. “This is your house,” he started, “so I play by your rules”—

“Then please, off yourself.”

—“as a guest, geez. Look, there’s been a massive misunderstanding here…”

“Wherever you tread, a world-shaking event occurs,” Fraise said. “I’ll be damned if nothing happens today.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“I didn’t even really kill anyone, just saying.”

“That’s foolish. If I look outside my window right now, I can see their unmoving bodies right there in the snow.”

“I just ‘unlocked their spines’ a little bit. I can put them back and they’ll be fine.” Indeed, the Lockpick Hero knew the structure of the human spine—and vampires aren’t any different. This, he knew from firsthand experience, as after a certain accident, his doctors had very much explained everything to him in excruciating detail.

Fraise sneered in contempt. Unlock a spine? “Unbelievable.” She shook her head.

“No, really. If I can do it to one right now, I’ll prove it to you.”

Fraise weighed her options. She could either die proud as the last Demon Queen, going down in history as one who faced the Lockpick Hero in harrowing combat—or take this crazed man’s words at face value and see if he could really…’unlock a spine’ like some visceral padlock.

She whipped her hand forwards, and the throne room’s doors opened on their own. There stood under the doorway a frightened soldier.

“Come inside,” she said. The soldier obeyed, and when he was in the middle of the room… “Halt,” Fraise said. With another wave of the hand, her soldier fell asleep right then and there.

If he was going to die for this wicked demonstration, then he should go painlessly.

The Lockpick Hero walked up to the man’s body, like a shark prodding its food. With a click, there was a snap. Thence, Fraise knew that the soldier was dead—

There was another click, and a lighter snap. She couldn’t believe it. She waved a hand, and the soldier got up—a little dazed, but he was alive!

The Lockpick Hero and Fraise the Unassailable locked eyes. “Okay,” she said, “let’s say I believe you. Why are you here?”

That was already in the letter, but he didn’t mention that. “I need to talk to the Demon Sage.”

“Hah!” What a cruel joke. “As if I could call him so easily!”

This was no lie. She wanted this ‘Hero’ to go away as soon as possible and give him what he wanted. Unfortunately, the collar around her neck prevented that. It had sapped at her power for 400 years now, and it tied her forever to this castle—free to roam, but never to escape.

“Is it because of that collar?” the Lockpick Hero…pointed at her neck!

Fraise shot to her feet. “Are you proposing what I think you’re proposing!”

The Lockpick Hero pulled his pointer finger back, a little surprised. “I mean, well, I just want to take that collar off your neck.”

Fraise blushed, restlessly glancing around the room and out the window.

Indeed, the Lockpick Hero’s talents extended to nonchalantly opening one’s heart.

He finally noticed the strangeness of their exchange. Had he been a bachelor, he would have rolled with it. For better or for worse, however, was already a married man. Needing to calm down the Demon Queen’s heart on the road to fighting a god was the last thing in his mind.

To blow away and reset her emotions, he quickly kowtowed and smashed his head into the floor, putting a small crack in it. It hurt like hell, but this was the only way to do things properly: a traditional vampiric display of utter apology. “I made a mistake! I totally forgot!” He smashed his head into the floor again.

Fraise was shocked, then panicked. “What do you mean! Answer me!” she demanded, yet, the Lockpick Hero continued smashing his head into the floor.

“That wasn’t supposed to be”—he smashed his head—”a marriage proposal!”

Fraise was offended, but only until the Lockpick Hero smashed his head yet again into the floor. For a while, she mused over the sweetness of watching someone inflict upon themselves their suffering for a transgression against her—and yet, it irked her. “You may cease,” she said. The Lockpick Hero looked up to her with a bloodied forehead. The floor beneath him had been cracked into bits and powder.

“How ridiculous that the floor of this castle has inflicted more damage upon you than the knights of a hundred nations,” she scoffed. “This is no way for the Lockpick Hero to behave.”

For Fraise was a Queen, and to watch someone who should be her equal consider himself lower than her rubbed her off in the wrong way. Where did the chance at harrowing final combat go?

The Lockpick Hero had accomplished what he’d set out to do, for just like any good lockpicker, he had succeeded at properly closing the things he’d opened without breaking them, no matter if that thing was someone’s heart.

“Your…collar,” he said, wiping the blood from his forehead, “I can remove it.”

“And in exchange, you wish for me to call upon the Demon Sage?”

“Well, that’s the short of it.”

“You must tell me first,” she narrowed her eyes, “why? Why do you seek such a shadowy persona?”

“I’m going to fight god,” he said, “and go home.”

God, not goddess, she noted. “So it’s true,” she said. “You truly are Her Paladin.”

“The goddess? I met her once.”

“What—never mind. Please, do away with this cursed collar.”

—Click.