Chapter 426: Ten Thousand Applicants

Sage had expected several hundred people.

By sunrise, there were several thousand outside the gates.

He stood on the upper level of the Grand Guild Hall with both hands resting against the railing, staring through the enormous windows at a line that had already escaped the Grand Complex entrance, crossed part of the Western Crownway and continued beyond what he could see from his position.

The first applicants had apparently arrived before dawn. Then laborers came from the outer districts, clerks from commercial neighborhoods, craftsmen carrying tool cases, healers in robes of several different traditions, warriors looking for security positions, cooks, stable workers, accountants, former soldiers, unemployed apprentices, warehouse workers and people Sage couldn’t immediately classify.

Carriages occasionally stopped near the entrance and deposited better-dressed applicants who looked as though they had walked away from comfortable employment simply to see what the Adventurer Guild was offering.

Pax entered behind him carrying the first estimate from the security workers they’d temporarily contracted for crowd control. "We’re somewhere above six thousand," he said.

"More are still arriving."

Boren stared through another window. "You said hundreds yesterday."

"I was wrong."

"Remarkably wrong."

Mina pressed her face against the glass. "Can we open the gates?"

Sage looked down at the crowd once more. "We don’t have enough people to recruit the people we need because we haven’t recruited the people we need."

Boren considered that. "Welcome to administration."

They opened anyway.

The first hour almost became a disaster. Sage had prepared hundreds of application desks inside the Grand Guild Hall, but desks didn’t process people by themselves.

Temporary workers hired overnight distributed forms and directed applicants toward designated waiting areas, while Pax’s people managed queues and watched for trouble. Boren immediately reorganized the entrance after noticing craftsmen were being trapped behind general applicants.

Separate lines appeared for administration, security, skilled trades, hospitality, medical work and general labor. Sage opened several additional halls and assigned temporary clerks to basic registration.

Even Mina ended up helping by directing confused applicants toward the correct sections, although Sage removed her from that responsibility after discovering she’d started telling particularly rude people that the application hall was in the opposite direction.

The System became useful once the paperwork started entering Guild records.

[Kingdom Headquarters Recruitment Function Available.]

[Applications Received: 1,274]

[Applications Categorized.]

[Credentials Recorded.]

[Employment History Recorded.]

[Potential Information Inconsistencies Detected: 83]

Sage opened the final category and immediately understood the limitation. The System could compare information applicants provided, organize records and flag obvious contradictions, but it wasn’t declaring anyone dishonest.

One man claimed twelve years of experience despite being twenty-three. Another listed employment at two businesses during overlapping periods.

Several claimed professional certifications without providing issuing organizations.

Those were reasons to investigate, not magical proof of guilt.

"Good," Sage murmured.

He didn’t want the System choosing his entire workforce for him.

By midday, the number of applicants had crossed ten thousand.

Quality varied wildly.

Some people were genuinely unemployed and desperate for stable work. Others already had jobs but wanted better prospects.

Apprentices with barely six months of training applied for senior positions because nobody had explicitly forbidden them from trying.

A man applying to become a warehouse supervisor admitted during questioning that he’d never supervised anything larger than his family’s vegetable stall.

Another applicant claimed to be an experienced monster processor before Boren asked him to identify three common preserved monster organs displayed on a reference sheet. He identified none.

There were opportunists too. Several applicants attempted to negotiate salaries before completing registration.

One minor merchant’s son wanted a management position because his father could "bring valuable connections."

A supposed accountant had excellent clothing, beautiful handwriting and absolutely no idea how to reconcile mismatched ledgers.

Then Pax quietly began placing small marks beside certain applications.

Sage noticed. "Spies?"

"Probably observers more than spies."

"Difference?"

"Spies hide better."

Pax identified applicants connected to two mercenary companies, a merchant association and at least one minor noble household. None had done anything illegal.

They’d simply arrived suspiciously quickly, asked unusually specific questions about Guild operations or had connections Pax’s network already knew.

Sage didn’t reject them automatically.

"Treat them like everyone else," he said. "If they’re qualified, interview them. If someone wants to pay an employee to tell them how many chairs we own, that’s their problem. Sensitive information shouldn’t be available to ordinary staff anyway."

Pax smiled faintly. "That makes my job easier."

The sheer number of applicants forced Sage to stop interviewing ordinary candidates personally.

Instead, he focused on positions that could eventually influence entire departments, while Boren circulated between recruitment halls fixing problems before they became procedures.

At one point Sage found him arguing with a temporary clerk who had begun accepting verbal recommendations from wealthy applicants.

"No," Boren said, returning the recommendation letter. "Attach it to the application."

"But this seal belongs to..."

"I can see the seal."

"They requested preferential consideration."

"They’re receiving consideration. Preferentially attached to the back of the application."

Sage waited until the applicant left before approaching. "You’re enjoying this."

"I’ve watched enough stupid decisions become permanent Guild problems."

Boren pointed toward the paperwork. "Remember when Greyvale was small enough that we could fix mistakes by walking across the building? You can’t do that here. If we allow one person to skip procedure because their uncle owns three warehouses, tomorrow we’ll have fifty important uncles."

Sage nodded. "Keep stopping the uncles."

His first genuinely interesting interview came shortly afterward.

The woman entered carrying a plain leather folder rather than recommendation letters. She appeared to be in her late thirties, with dark brown hair pinned neatly behind her head and the exhausted patience of someone accustomed to correcting other people’s mistakes.

"Name?"

"Marcelline Dacre."

"Previous employment?"

"Office of Municipal Works. Western Administrative Ward. Eleven years."

Sage looked up. "Why leave after eleven years?"

"I didn’t. My contract ended three weeks ago."

"Why wasn’t it renewed?"

Marcelline’s expression barely changed. "A councilman’s nephew required my position."

Boren, seated beside Sage, coughed suspiciously.

Sage slid a deliberately disorganized packet across the table. It contained mock construction permits, maintenance requests, conflicting expense records and staffing reports based loosely on problems from Greyvale’s expansion.

"Organize that."

Marcelline didn’t ask why. She began reading.

Within ten minutes she’d separated urgent infrastructure issues from routine requests, identified two duplicated payments, marked an unsigned authorization, grouped related maintenance complaints and placed a staffing request aside.

"This shouldn’t be approved," she said.

"Why?"

"Because the department requesting twelve additional clerks has twenty-seven employees and reports work sufficient for nineteen. Either their workload records are false or eight people aren’t working."

Boren slowly sat forward.

Sage took back the packet. "How soon can you start?"

Her eyebrows rose. "That was the interview?"

"That was the useful part."

The second candidate Sage remembered arrived from the Finance hall because she’d apparently started arguing with the test.

Her name was Irene Valcrest, thirty-one, formerly an accountant for a large merchant consortium. She placed Sage’s recruitment budget on the table and immediately pointed at three figures.

"These estimates are wrong."

Boren looked offended. "I helped make those."

"Then you helped make them wrong." Irene said calmly.

Sage almost smiled.

Irene tapped the projected hotel staffing cost. "You’re budgeting salaries but not turnover. New hospitality operations lose workers during their first months. Recruitment replacement costs aren’t included. Your restaurant projections assume all twelve facilities open simultaneously, but that means twelve management teams before you’ve established customer volume.And your security estimate assumes fixed staffing while your public traffic could change by several thousand people daily."

"What would you do?"

"Open facilities in phases. Maintain a recruitment reserve. Centralize procurement until individual facilities establish predictable demand. And stop pretending your first month’s expenses represent normal operation."

Boren looked at Sage. "Hire her."

Irene frowned. "I haven’t agreed yet."

"See?" Boren said. "Financial discipline already."

The third candidate came from Mission Administration.

Garran Holt was forty-six, broad across the shoulders and missing the tip of his left ear. He had spent seventeen years working with mercenary contracts after retiring from active monster hunting.

Rather than asking him questions about mission evaluation, Sage handed him five sample requests.

Garran rejected the first immediately. "Client calls this a routine escort. Route crosses Redjaw territory during breeding season."

He increased the second mission’s provisional danger rating because the client had described an unidentified monster as "probably weak."

"Probably kills people."

The third he lowered. "Merchant exaggerated the danger because he thinks higher-ranked escorts look impressive."

The fourth required a specialist Mage rather than stronger warriors.

The fifth made Garran stare at Sage. "Who wrote this?"

"I did." Sage raised an eyebrow and said.

"It’s terrible." Garran shook his head.

Boren turned away to hide his laughter.

"Why?"

Garran took a deep breath and explained. "No verified location. No confirmed monster count. Reward doesn’t match uncertainty. Client provides no withdrawal conditions. Any evaluator approving this deserves to accompany the party personally."

Sage added Garran’s name to the shortlist.

By afternoon, more promising candidates were appearing across other halls, though Sage didn’t meet all of them personally. Reports began accumulating on his desk.

A dwarf named Bramdir Coppervein, whose practical examination had caused three Capital smiths to stop their own tests and watch, was being considered for senior authority in the Grand Guild Smithing Complex.

A veteran security officer named Cassian Rook had reorganized a deliberately flawed patrol scenario in minutes and discovered the planted breach nobody else noticed.

Selene Arkwright, an experienced hotel administrator, had rejected Sage’s proposed room-allocation model and produced a better one before her interview ended.

There were others.

Maura Bellamy, a chef and restaurant manager who had previously overseen several large kitchens, was being evaluated for the Dining Quarter rather than a single restaurant.

Oren Thales, a Mage specializing in mana environments and cultivation safety, had scored highest among candidates examined for the Mana Cultivation Tower.

Tobias Merrow, a caravan logistics coordinator with fifteen years of experience moving goods through the Capital, had applied for Guild Logistics and immediately begun asking questions about the Warehouse District, freight entrances and future regional routes.

Sage didn’t hire them merely because their names reached his desk.

Each would face another interview.

Each would need verification.

But for the first time, the Kingdom Headquarters had the beginnings of a leadership structure.

Then Sage checked the recruitment interface.

[Applications Received: 13,846]

[Initial Processing Completed: 4,109]

[Awaiting Initial Processing: 9,737]

He stared at the final number.

Outside, the line still hadn’t disappeared.

Inside, temporary clerks were drowning beneath applications.

Interview rooms were full. Practical examinations had waiting lists. Even with the System categorizing records and preventing paperwork from becoming complete chaos, people still had to read, question, verify, test and decide.

Boren walked over carrying another stack of applications and placed it on Sage’s desk.

Sage looked at the stack.

Then at Boren.

Then through the glass wall toward hundreds of people waiting outside the recruitment rooms.

He had started recruitment because the Kingdom Headquarters needed employees.

Now recruitment itself needed employees.