There is a phrase buried in those memories, one surrounded by no small amount of melancholy. ‘A man can only cross a river once.’ The idea being that the crossing changes you, you spend strength and time, you learn how to do it better, you aren't the same afterwards. If you turn back, the river has changed too, the water you swam through has moved on. If I took an amazing adventurer class my name could echo down through history, but my village would never look the same. I might never again wrestle my brothers or work the mill with my father. My life already looked smaller next to the grand cities of my past life, but I knew every inch of my home and it was home in every sense of the word.

My hand hovered over the [Miller] (Legendary) and I tapped it

Miller: Legendary Achievement Level

One who owns or works in a grain mill. This class specializes in the rendering of grains into flour, but you have advanced the art. You’ve traveled a world, learning milling techniques and practicing everything from primitive grinding with a stone on stone to using modern machinery to create single serving artesian flour. You’ve watched masters of their craft and sampled a near endless variety of bread and flour made from dozens of grains, nuts, beans, and even root vegetables! You have traveled worlds and dedicated yourself to a rustic lifestyle, but given your experiences it will not limit your growth.

Class skills will support all the activities related to operating and maintaining a mill, even beyond what is considered possible.

Class Skills and Abilities scale with wisdom and dexterity

Per Level Receive 3 Wisdom 3 Dexterity 3 Strength 11 Free Attributes Class Restrictions and Bonuses Only gain experience from milling

Gain increased experience from milling

Select class? Y/N

The only part of that class description that I expected were the last line and the first line. My grandfather had advanced [Miller] to the point where that was his only source of experience, and that was only a few years before age stopped him from milling. My father was still years away from reaching that point, and here I was with it on my first day of adulthood.

Why do I have a legendary option? I contemplated the box, its words and implications. I remember finding a boulder when I was a child in my first life, before my parents got divorced and I learned about why the world was the way it was. During a family trip I found a boulder with large shallow holes in it. My parents told me it was a Native American grinding stone, where ancient people would grind or pound corn and pine nuts, over time this wore deeper and deeper holes in rocks like this. I was captivated by the idea, so of course, I waited till I wasn’t observed, collected some pine nuts and used a fist size rock to smash them into paste. It became a core memory, but also it tasted like dirt, I had not even tried to clean either the bolder or the stone I was using.

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Grinding popcorn in a coffee grinder, years later, to make corn flour on one hungry college day. Hours spent watching documentaries, more than a few covered mills, their history, their operation and how their advancement led to the rise of empires. A whole country using windmills to drain an ocean and reclaim land, not something I would use, but still a use for mills. As I focused on it I could feel my memory being guided, I could recall every drawing or schematic of a mill I had ever seen, not in perfect clarity but they were there. Windmills, water mills, steam powered, electric mills, human driven, and on and on, like a highlighter was being drawn across my memory. I remembered a Biblical story of a strong man who was blinded and lashed to a mill as punishment, and another story of a barbarian chained to a mill that only made him stronger. In my travels I had seen mills in foreign countries, on several continents.

I had sampled a wider variety of milled flours than I really paid attention to at the time, genetically modified gains, enriched flour, corn, wheat, barely, even things that weren’t grains, nuts, dried root vegetables, different combinations of all of them and on and on. I remembered helping my father lift sacks of grain onto the mill stone, working on the wood components, replacing broken wood, really knowing a single mill. Long days spent checking grain, cleaning the mill, hauling flour. Talks with my father late into the night on how to manually do everything his skills did, practicing till I could run the mill with my eyes closed. Then doing the same thing with each of my brothers. From a pure milling perspective, I had milling experiences and knowledge that no other miller in this world could have on top of 18 years of experience at our family mill. The description was accurate as much as it wasn’t really accurate, I had done all those things, but not with the goal of being a miller till this life. I could feel how the class would help me bridge the gap between all those blurry memories and make them something useful.

This was some real, ‘the power was in you all along’ bullshit. Yes, technically, it was inside me, but this system was very much an outside help, all that knowledge was useless without a class to bind it together. Just trivia, no practical know-how.

For a few moments I sat dumbstruck by this, all of this, what achievements and feats will I have unlocked from my first life? All but lost in I thought I realized I was taking far too long to decide, I glanced to my left and right, all the other participants were off the green, they had already reported their class and stats to the mayor. My hand was in the air to confirm my class selection, there was a way to use the interface mentally, but early on you had to use gestures, I brought my finger down.

“[Pause Class Selection]” a low voice said, I almost jumped when I realized the magistrate was standing directly in front of me, face inches from mine, this close I could tell his eyes were a steel grey. He was standing almost strait to look directly in my eyes, with an intensity as if he were trying to read the reflection of my screens in them. Speaking in a low, almost conspiratorial tone he asked, “Is there a problem, boy? You seem troubled. More so that just poor options, you seem… conflicted.” Before I could respond he looked to the mayor who was nervously standing behind him, “who is this boy?”

“That would be Miatiaus, a Millerson. His family operates the only mill in our village, find upstanding folk.” He stated in a calm sounding tone, but the words came out just a little to fast. He was nervous.

The magistrate locked his eyes back on me, eye to eye but not focused on me, he was trying to read my movements. “Is he the type to slack off on his lessons? Any problems from his mill?”

“No sir, he is dutiful in all aspects of his work, there have been no complaints about quantity, quality, or compensation from his house in some years” the mayor said with slightly more confidence.

Shocked by this, I looked to my father at the side of the green, he had is hat off and was wringing it in his hands. Last time I saw him do that was at my youngest brother’s birth, the healer at the time said my mom almost died despite her skills, something dangerous was happening here. What did my family’s mill have to do with anything? I had never heard of a class selection being paused, and now my father looks like he is worried for my life.