Chapter 255: The Most Efficient Gnomes

Anna’s elite gnomes waited until the festival ended before proving that the ordinary staff had managed it inefficiently.

Their conclusion began as a report.

The elite team identified delayed carts, duplicated visitor directions, unnecessary registration checks, poorly arranged storage, and eleven occasions when ordinary gnomes walked farther than required to complete a task.

Anna read the report in the core room while Max reviewed the festival’s final traffic numbers.

"Did you ask them to evaluate the staff?" Max asked.

"No."

The report ended with a proposed demonstration. For one day, Anna’s elite team would perform every major Sanctuary job using fewer workers and less time.

The ordinary gnome staff had already accepted the challenge.

Neither side had sent the matter through the tiered response system because both classified it as an internal efficiency exercise.

Anna closed the report.

"They begin tomorrow."

"Are you going to stop them?"

"I want to know how long it takes them to regret it."

The competition started at registration.

Anna’s gnomes processed visitors quickly. They recognized forged names, incomplete party information, and duplicated entries before the ordinary clerks finished opening their stations. Registration remained optional, but the elite team could record willing entrants with impressive speed.

Then a caravan arrived with thirty-seven people who wanted lodging directions, portal information, and help locating relatives.

The elite gnomes treated every question as an interruption to registration. Their numbers remained excellent while the waiting area filled with people whose needs were not registration problems.

Ordinary clerks opened a separate help table and cleared the crowd.

The elite team moved to portal coordination.

They reduced the time between caravan groups by arranging travelers before the portal activated. The method worked until an elderly visitor needed more time crossing and a child dropped a bag in the threshold lane. The elite gnomes preserved the schedule by rerouting the next group without stopping the portal.

The ordinary staff preserved the people by delaying the next activation.

No one was injured. The elite team’s schedule lost its advantage.

Hospital intake produced the clearest difference. Anna’s gnomes identified incoming resurrection cases, afterlife notices, and party connections almost before bodies settled into place. Their speed came from treating every case as a tactical event.

Patients who awakened confused did not need tactical efficiency. They needed explanations repeated at a pace they could understand.

An ordinary attendant spent ten minutes calming one adventurer. The elite team marked the interaction as an excessive delay. Anna changed the mark herself.

"A person is not unresolved paperwork." she said.

The elite gnome responsible corrected the record without arguing.

By midday, the competition spread to maintenance. Elite gnomes repaired signs, replaced hinges, and reorganized a supply room in half the ordinary time.

The signs used abbreviated labels that visitors could not understand. The replacement hinges were strong enough for fortified doors and unnecessarily expensive. The supply room placed emergency material according to the fastest retrieval route for a trained gnome, leaving everything above human shoulder height.

Max encountered the results while walking with Quin.

"They improved the room for themselves." Quin said.

"They are proving they can perform every job."

"They proved they can reach the top shelf."

The ordinary staff reorganized the lower shelves. The elite gnomes recorded that change as a loss of efficiency.

Food service created harmless chaos. The elite team applied supply calculations used for deployments and produced exactly enough meals for the expected crowd. Ordinary cooks prepared extra portions because visitors arrived unpredictably.

The elite calculation would have worked if a Level Three party had not returned early with rescued dwarves included in its instance outcome. The dwarves were constructed participants and did not remain in Sanctuary, but the party arrived hungry and brought spectators waiting for the result.

The ordinary kitchen fed them. The elite table ran out.

Waste collection gave the elite team its strongest victory. They plotted every bin, calculated fill rates from the festival, and changed collection routes before the first cart moved. The work finished early with fewer trips.

Then the market opened.

The new routes assumed the festival’s food stalls remained in place. Ordinary merchants used different bins, and two carts arrived at alleys blocked by deliveries. The elite gnomes recalculated while workers waited.

An ordinary sanitation supervisor took the map, drew three optional turns, and sent the carts onward.

"Your route was faster." he told the elite planner when the work ended. "Mine survives a wagon being in the way."

The elite gnome added adaptability as a measured category.

A messenger assignment followed. Each team had to deliver notices across Sanctuary without using the core’s direct communication. The elite gnomes divided destinations and left at once. Ordinary staff spent several minutes discussing who knew each recipient.

The elite team reached every listed address first. Three recipients had moved, one worked a different shift, and a merchant’s shop was closed. The ordinary messengers found all four by asking neighbors and coworkers.

One elite gnome began following an ordinary messenger to observe his questions. The ordinary gnome accused him of copying. Anna ruled that learning during the competition was allowed because improving Sanctuary mattered more than preserving a score.

Both teams objected for different reasons.

Anna gathered both teams before the final assignment.

The elite gnomes remained convinced they could recover. The ordinary staff had become equally determined to prove that specialized competence failed outside specialized work.

The last test involved the information desk near the portal plaza.

Max and Anna watched from across the street.

The elite team assigned one gnome to receive questions, one to retrieve answers, and one to direct movement. Routine requests disappeared immediately. Directions to the Arena, Skyyard schedule, hospital location, and current portal traffic required seconds.

Then visitors began asking questions with no single correct answer.

Which inn was quietest? Where could someone find work without entering the dungeon? Which market repaired a damaged religious object? How should a party replace a member who wanted to leave?

The elite team produced accurate facts and poor advice.

Ordinary gnomes knew which innkeeper disliked late arrivals, which merchant accepted unusual repairs, and which guilds welcomed incomplete parties. Their knowledge came from repeated conversations rather than system records.

The elite gnomes conceded the desk after one of them directed a grieving family to three different offices because no category covered what they wanted.

Anna ended the competition.

Before announcing a result, she gave both groups an unscheduled problem. A gnome from the hospital entered the plaza pretending to be a visitor searching for a missing companion. The description contained a name used by two registered adventurers, an outdated inn, and a level the companion might have entered.

The elite team separated the possibilities immediately. One checked registration, one contacted the level entrance, and one secured the described meeting point in case the person returned.

The ordinary staff recognized the outdated inn and found its former owner, who remembered where regular guests had moved. They also asked the supposed visitor when she had last seen the companion, a question neither group had included in its first plan.

The answer made every search unnecessary. The companion had been seen after the alleged disappearance.

The elite team had mobilized faster. The ordinary team had obtained context faster. Working together, they would have resolved the case before either independent method did.

"Efficiency includes deciding whether the task is needed." Anna said. "It also includes being ready when it is."

Neither side claimed victory over the exercise.

Anna required each team to teach the other one procedure before the day ended.

The elite gnomes demonstrated rapid incident division. Instead of sending several people toward the same urgent report, the first responder assigned verification, containment, communication, and recovery as separate responsibilities. Ordinary staff recognized how the method could improve portal failures and hospital surges.

The ordinary staff taught conversational handoff. A visitor transferred between workers should not have to repeat an entire story. The first worker recorded what the person wanted, what had already been attempted, and any uncertainty that remained. Elite reports contained more facts but often omitted what the visitor believed was happening.

The two groups tested the combined methods on a line of volunteers carrying deliberately confusing requests. Resolution slowed during the first attempts because everyone tried to follow both procedures perfectly. By the fifth, they had removed redundant steps.

The final time beat both teams’ independent results from the morning. ℯ

No one agreed whether cooperation counted as another category. Anna recorded it as the point of the exercise.

The elite team had won registration speed, emergency identification, and physical repairs. The ordinary staff had won visitor support, hospital communication, food service, and every task depending on local relationships.

Neither group could perform every Sanctuary job better than the other.

Waste collection ended in a draw after the elite route and ordinary adjustments were combined. Messenger service went to the ordinary staff for completion and to the elite team for speed, which satisfied no one.

Max expected disappointment. Instead, the elite gnomes began revising their report.

They classified each failure, identified which ordinary procedures had produced better outcomes, and proposed joint emergency drills. The competition had given them information they considered valuable.

The ordinary staff demanded recognition for winning more categories.

Anna awarded them a painted board reading MOST EFFICIENT ORDINARY GNOMES IN SANCTUARY.

The elite team objected to the word ordinary.

The staff placed the board above the information desk.

Max thought the matter had ended until he found a second document attached to the original report.

[Unofficial Personnel and Visitor Difficulty Rankings]

The elite gnomes had not begun judging everyone during the competition.

They had been keeping the rankings for months.