It was late at night in the empty offices of Iffole Counter.
Alina sat down on the visitor’s couch, steepled her fingers together, and solemnly opened her mouth. “—And that was how the disaster of the first day of tournament applications went.”
Her report was directed at a man sitting opposite her.
There was already a large mountain of application forms in the desk area behind her, but Alina took her eyes off them for a moment. She had bigger problems than the volume of documents to process.
“Unsurprisingly, the main issue is the rule about every member of a party needing to give their license and signature to apply. Not even half the applicants knew about it or understood it. And it’s downright inefficient, not to mention unhealthy, for me to have to explain it every time, get insulted, and then drive them off… We need a quick fix for this.”
After that long preface, Alina let out a sigh and said, “And so now, I shall open the first strategy meeting concerning fighting tournament applications.”
“Glad to be here.” The man sitting across from her, Jade Scrade, had his hands folded in his lap, and he answered Alina with a serious look in his eyes. “But the special window for the tournament, huh… The crazy high number of entrants you have to process aside, the biggest problem is that your workflow keeps getting bogged down.”
“That’s exactly it.” Alina gave a big nod. “The confusion at the service window is not only an obstruction to smooth reception work, but it also causes clerical errors—input errors, checking errors. If there’s even a single error, then I’ll be playing catch-up on the mistakes, so processing the documents will take a lot longer. A single error will be fatal…!”
“So the first day, you felt like you were just barely keeping up with all the adventurers who kept coming in without having read the application rules?”
“Exactly. But from what I’ve heard, it’s like this every single time the tournament happens. You’re at the adventurers’ mercy the whole time, and highly skilled receptionists deal with it by just diving in headfirst… It’s really inefficient. I’m sure that’s because it’s only ever held once every four years, so the job keeps on getting passed on to the next victim without being improved at all.”
If they’d needed to field applicants for the tournament every day, like with their ordinary reception duties, then the office would have improved the process so it could be handled more efficiently. But applications for the tournament only happened once every four years. Looking at the “three-line takeover” or the “blank-paged manual,” it was clear that the one in charge had their hands full with office work and hadn’t had the time to think about any plans to improve it for next time.
Most likely, the ones in charge of past events had tucked the related documents in the basement stacks as soon as the tournament was over, thinking out of sight, out of mind, and had let four years pass without ever considering it again.
“The tricky part is it’s once every four years, so it’s unlikely that the same person will handle it more than once. A new person is forced to start from scratch every time, without any accumulated know-how…”
“Then the first thing to do is set up a smooth process for receiving applications and make it routine. Then we can have future receptionists copy that…,” Alina said.
“A-Alina…!” Jade leaned forward in his seat, as if he were struck by something. “It’s amazing that you’re thinking about the receptionist who will be taking over in four years, when you’re having a tough time now.”
“…I mean, I kind of have the feeling like I’ll be put in charge of the tournament next time, too…”
“…I see…”
Banishing that nightmarish prediction, Alina clenched her fists. “And so today, we’re going to come up with a plan to smooth out reception during the day!”
“Yeah, I guess that is the number one priority.”
Jade nodded, and the two of them began planning.