Pell had to take a gamble—a dangerous one—on whether Enya could be the key to his freedom. If this gamble didn't pay off, he would waste weeks, maybe even months, training the girl, all for nothing. Worse yet, he would risk pissing off an entire family of high-nobles. He was essentially shooting a flaming arrow inside of a dark, mining cave, hoping not to hit anything explosive.

  People only ever had one class in their lifetime. Sure, there were exceptions—pills that could reset a person’s class, but those were nearly impossible to get. Several crafting professions could make such a pill. However; he suspected even High-Nobles would struggle to acquire them. For everyone else, choosing a class was a onetime deal. Whatever you chose stuck with you for the rest of your life. That’s why nobles and the wealthy invested so heavily into their heirs, nurturing the young with immense resources to ensure they received the best choices possible.

  "The danger of... how would they... ah but I can... no..." Pell was subconsciously muttering aloud.

  Enya just stared at him as he did so, patiently waiting for him to finish as they walked. He was so incoherent that Enya just ignored him, as deciphering his words was just too much. She had only about a week and a half worth of actual language study.

  For him to leave this dungeon, someone needed to claim the dungeon core and turn off the dungeon's restrictions. However, he was trapped here, bound to the current floor. He couldn’t do anything by himself.

  The floor Pell and Enya were on right now, was floor five. This dungeon was a reverse-tower type. One that started from above, at floor one, and then led into lower floors, with increasing difficulty. The first five floors were quite easy—at least, for adventurers; they mainly comprised a few lower-level monsters. Pell had scouted out the first two floors by himself when he was alive and determined this to be a lower-tier dungeon. That was why Pell hired D-rank adventurers. People strong enough to clear the dungeon, but still green enough not to be overly confident and greedy. The last thing Pell wanted was for a higher-ranked adventurer to murder him and claim the dungeon as their own spoils.

  The fifth floor, filled with skeletons and zombies, had been their party’s limit. He hadn’t expected there to be so many floors. Typically, lower ranked dungeons only contained three to five floors, yet this one contained more than that.

  Of the monsters on this floor, he could fight one or two with a sword, but whatever lay past on the 6th floor was going to be too difficult for him to handle. Pell just wasn't a fighter. He had gotten into many a scuffle when he was younger in his thievery days, but he wasn't a trained fighter. He was an adult now, so he could match a young E-rank adventurer, but that was it. Pell wasn't strong enough to claim the dungeon core for himself. Not with his merchant class. But perhaps someone else could.

  There were only a few classes Enya would learn enough about and be eligible to ascend with here. Monster Fighter required being strong enough to slay monsters yourself with bare fists. Swordsmen or Swordswomen—while there were plenty of swords all around—he was no instructor to teach her the basics. Just swinging a sword around wouldn't do her any favors either.

  There weren’t spell books inside of the study. Not general ones for a mage. All of them had been specifically about necromancy. Ones that contained the knowledge of basic necromancy. Ones that contained enough information to surely assist in ascending a beginner…

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  Pell knew what he was doing. He knew that it was wrong. That it would be one of the cruelest things someone could force upon another. Once he got there, it would be him confirming with himself to go through with his plan. One he was most likely sure to regret.

  Enya, the bratty little girl who had been his unwelcome companion for the past two weeks, had done nothing but irritate him with her incessant questions and inability to understand anything he said. Pell had never liked children, but he was above harming them. Still, the thought of what lay ahead gnawed at him, becoming a chaotic storm of conflicting emotions.

  She would die without me. She will die without a class, he thought.

  This was true, or so he tried to believe. His plan might ruin her future, but it’s a better option than letting her die now. It would be irresponsible to force her class to change—but even more irresponsible to just let her die without a fighting chance.

  She needed him just as much as he needed her. That’s all there was to it.

  He silently cursed himself inside his skull for being a merchant of all things at the current moment. Pell was never good at anything but thievery and leeching off others, and trying to keep himself safe. That’s why, after everything he had been through, he had earned the option of selecting ‘thief’ or ‘rogue’ as a class. It was tempting at first, but he knew that it would just get him killed sooner than later. People with those classes never lived long, besides only the top echelon of the gifted and talented. And so, he ignored them, and waited nearly twenty years before choosing his class.

  Only by mere chance did he come across old books about merchantry. Being a merchant meant being able to become wealthy and form connections. If he couldn’t fight and kill monsters, then perhaps he could simply talk and bullshit his way into a wealthy life. Merchants were greedy assholes who only cared about profit.

  Pell fit that role perfectly.

  Greediness, however, was exactly what caused Pell to die. He wanted to conquer the dungeon and loot all the resources for himself. That was a large reason why he had gathered greenhorn adventurers to come with him. That, and also he wanted to keep the price low. But in the end, Pell’s greed caught up to him. He had finally died. Died alone, with no one by his side. Just like his life had always been.

  There was, however, one person who had stuck by him. The only person who had truly tried to save him, who had seen past the facade and glimpsed the real him. That person was why Pell had chosen to become a merchant. She was someone who cared for a failing orphanage and had walked over a pitfall because of a noble’s demonic and revolting scheme. It was because of her that Pell continued to struggle for freedom, refusing to call it quits just yet.

  Both Enya and Pell continued walking for several minutes. The dungeon was an absolute mess. Torches had fallen off their walls, and creeping shadows formed monstrous apparitions from the holes in the walls. The ground had been annihilated, upending rocks and sharp edges of earth into deadly spikes. One false step and they could fall, impaling themselves on the multiple spears of rock.

  Enya was smaller and more agile than Pell. She could take small leaps over certain gaps and avoid the hazardous traps. Pell also tried to avoid some of the sharp edges, but didn’t do that well of a job at it. He didn’t need to worry about the ground as much as the fleshy human behind him. He felt no pain. No physical pain.

  They soon approached a slightly more lit area, and Enya spotted a long hallway that actually led to a dead-end. Squinting, she could see a very slight divot, a small discoloring of… something near the corner of the wall. Before she could ask about it, Pell spoke up first.

  “Hey kid, do you want to become a necromancer?”

  Enya, having heard the word before, but not knowing exactly what it meant, simply tilted her head at the question.