2. House Rules (Otherworld Ver.)
First things first, I asked the knights who had just obliterated the bell — including the Knight Commander himself — to spare me some time.
The Commander gave a nod, though not without a caveat.
"My lord, I must apologize, but the training schedule was set personally by the Lord of the House. I cannot stay with you for long."
"There's nothing to apologize for. I'm the one who barged in out of nowhere."
So we assembled a group of four: three knights who had experience with Kylegalli, plus the Commander. All we needed after that was a suitable desk from the administrative office near the training grounds.
And thus a desk and a board game appeared on the training field without warning — yet the knights who had paused their drills seemed genuinely intrigued by the sight.
Well, fair enough. If a gloriously fun event like this popped up at my job, I'd happily stop and gawk too.
Sally set out the deck of cards she'd packed separately, along with the bell, then took a single step back.
"Could you... play it normally, this time?"
"Hmm. Without aura this round, I presume?"
"That's the request."
"Understood. Everyone, you heard the young master. No aura for this game."
"""Yes, sir."""
Hm. The vibe here is less "playing because it's fun" and more "playing because they were told to." Can't exactly blame them, though.
I'd have to find some way to make it up to those four later.
I was still mulling over whether I should drop a hint to old Charles when the Knight Commander started the first turn.
Slap, slap.
"……………."
"…………."
"………………."
"………."
Slap, slap.DING!
"Ah, too slow."
"Indeed... haha."
"…………Whew."
"……………."
How do I put this.
The energy in the air had completely flatlined.
It couldn't all be chalked up to exhaustion from the training they'd just finished — something about the knights' expressions nagged at me. It wasn't boredom or disinterest, exactly. It was more like... frustration.
There didn't seem to be much point in watching further, so I called it to a stop.
"Let's end it there. Care to try again with aura?"
"...Are you quite certain, my lord?"
"Absolutely."
"Very well. Then───"
───CRUNCH.
"...As you can see, my lord, no matter how we try, the game falls apart. Once aura enters the picture, power control becomes essential — but since Kylegalli is a game that inflames one's competitive spirit, it happens naturally. Even when we strike the bell as gently as we can, well... this is the result."
"Oh dear."
"A knight can bend ordinary steel bars without effort. A small bell made of cheap iron like this is... well."
So it wasn't even a matter of power control — the bell's durability itself was the problem.
And honestly, if the knights had to consciously hold back to keep from smashing it, they'd never be able to fully immerse themselves in Kylegalli. They'd be better off not playing at all. The whole point of a board game is being able to lose yourself in it, without a care in the world for anything else.
Still, this particular problem seemed to have a solution within reach. Standing right beside me was a superhuman of a different stripe than the knights.
"Sally? Could you cast a hardening spell on this bell?"
"I-I could, but... with my mana, it w-won't hold for very long......"
"If it can survive even one round, that's good enough for now."
"Th-that much, I can manage......"
Hmmm.
Sally's hand glowed blue, and with a few simple hand signs, the bell she'd brought along responded — a thin, translucent film of blue light spreading over its surface.
It was the bell Father had confiscated from the maids. Thank goodness I remembered to grab it on my way out of the office.
She placed the hardened bell on the table, then immediately retreated to a safe distance.
Just in case. Yep.
"Commander, I'll need your help again!"
"Hardening magic... understood. Here I come — can you follow?"
"""Yes, sir!"""
And then.
A storm broke loose.
SlapslapslapDINGslapslapDINGslapslapslapslapslapDINGslapslapslapslapslapDINGslapDINGDINGslapslapslapslapslapDINGslapslapslapslapDING───
Freed from the burden of restraint — arguably — the knights moved even faster than before.
Perhaps out of some small consideration for my limited eyesight, they'd slowed just a hair — though at their pace, it still looked like each of them had sprouted several extra arms.
I couldn't follow the game at all, but the knights seemed perfectly at home with this speed, flipping cards, smashing the bell, retrieving the cards, flipping again, on and on.
Then, barely two minutes in.
SlapslapslapDING!!
"Whew. Victory is mine."
"As expected of the Commander. You're far quicker than I am, sir."
"It's much better not having to worry about holding back our strength."
"...By the way, my lord — is Kylegalli normally over this quickly?"
No. Absolutely not.
The Commander and the knights looked far better than before — but the aftermath was far more brutal, too. The bell's blue glow had nearly faded, the hardening on its last legs; the table had cracked and wobbled on its legs; and the cards had been shredded into pulp ages ago.
This isn't some disposable board game, for crying out loud.
They say skilled aura users can move faster than sound, but this was beyond anything I'd imagined. I couldn't tell whether the Viscount Byron's knights were simply exceptional or if this was the knightly average — but either way, they needed to be able to play smoothly.
And I can't exactly station a mage at every game session, or replace the cards and the table each time.
"Hah... hah......"
Even with a mage on standby, barely two minutes of play had left Sally visibly drained. It would take no ordinary mage to maintain a hardening spell through one of the knights' hyperspeed games.
And that wasn't the only problem.
"If we could keep playing like this, would you be able to enjoy Kylegalli?"
"Ah, well — if this is the standard... though I can't say it's entirely satisfying. Personally, I think I'd prefer to move my body a bit more."
"My lord! I would prefer the games to last longer!"
"The cards tearing is also a problem. The mage could sustain the hardening on the bell, perhaps, but never on the cards as well."
"I wish there were a bit more knightliness to it."
Perhaps because the Commander had shot them a discreet warning glance, the three knights who'd played laid out their opinions one after another — each different from the last.
Which meant simply making the bell sturdier wouldn't solve anything. The goal was to reshape the game into something the knights could genuinely enjoy.
So: lengthen the play time, let them move their bodies like true knights, solve the card-and-bell durability problem — and somehow, without losing the fundamental fun of the board game.
...Was that even possible?
"Let me... think about it for a bit."
"Haha, take your time. Now — the rest of you, resume training!"
"""""YES, SIR!!!"""""
"Ah — the Commander has to supervise the drills, so I can't help that, but might I borrow those three knights for a while? It won't take long."
"...Thirty minutes at the absolute most. Any longer and we cannot complete the training schedule."
"Thank you, Commander."
"Not at all."
Though truthfully, the ones radiating the most heartfelt gratitude were those three knights, their eyes shining like stars.
Was it really such a joy to be allowed to join training thirty minutes late? Their eyes burned with such fervent loyalty toward me that I could only wonder.
So they move like that because they're drilled this brutally, huh...
Anyway, to stay out of the training's way, I headed to a corner of the field with Sally and the three knights.
"First off, everyone, just rest for now."
"Not at all, my lord! Serving you is our sworn duty as knights of House Byron!"
"However you work us, it'll be less brutal than training!"
"For glory to Viscount Byron!"
"Shall I send you back to training, then?"
"...We shall rest! All personnel, stand down!"
"""STANDING DOWN!!"""
Nice. Instant silence.
While the three knights rested under the shade of a tree, I sat down in the chair Sally had brought and buried my head in my hands... wait a moment.
"When did you get this chair here?"
"W-with magic! Hehe......"
Didn't she look utterly exhausted just a moment ago...? She seems fine now, though.
Regardless, I flashed her a grateful smile, then sank deep into thought.
Original Halli Galli has a wealth of house rules.
There were special cards that worked like the King, Queen, and Jack in Uno, swapping the turn order, or letting you play extra cards under certain conditions.
There was a rule where, when flipping a card, you laid it only halfway over the previous one, so the partially uncovered fruit was still fair game.
There was even a variant where pressing the bell by mistake didn't cost you cards — instead, one of your hands got sealed.
Plenty of options I could test right away. And all of them, unfortunately, were wrong for this situation.
Every house rule I knew was built on the assumption that the core gameplay stayed intact — you only tweaked the fine details around the edges.
The knights' physical abilities exceed anything I can imagine, and reaching from a seated position to the bell takes them less than an instant.
On top of that, they seemed to genuinely enjoy the rapid-fire pace. If I slapped on extra rules carelessly, there was a real risk the game would slow to a crawl and land in some awkward middle ground.
But still — they're already absurdly fast, so how do I...
"......Huh?"
Hold on.
Just a little more.
Let me think a little deeper about this.
Fast? Why is the game fast?
Because superhumans wielding aura have overwhelming physical stats.
Then why does the game end so quickly?
Because every step — flipping the card, striking the bell — happens in the blink of an eye.
Why do the knights still find it lacking, even playing like that?
Because in the end, only their two arms and their eyes are doing any moving.
Do the knights really want a speedy game?
To be precise, what they want is a game where they can go all-out. The speed is just a natural byproduct of that.
In that case.
Let me strip it down to the simplest possible answer.
"M-my lord? Why are you looking at us like that...?"
"One moment — everyone, come here."
"Yes?"
"There's something I want to try."
What if I simply, physically...
increased the distance?
That way they'd use their whole bodies more, and the games would last longer.
"Hah! Haaah!!!"
"Faster! Strike with greater force! Never let your aura circulation falter!!"
""""YES!!""""
As ever, the Knight Commander was hard at work drilling the knights — yet his gaze kept drifting, again and again, toward a corner of the training field.
It couldn't be helped. The third young master, Kyle, coming to the training grounds was, in itself, that remarkable an occurrence.
Unlike the other young masters, he had no talent for the sword.
The eldest had shown talent in both magic and swordsmanship; the second in the sword alone. Kyle, by contrast, had always been clumsy with anything physical. As far as the Commander could recall, the last time Kyle had set foot on the training grounds was years ago.
And now that very Kyle had come — bringing with him a game called Kylegalli.
It was a fun game, admittedly.
But honestly speaking, while it might suit ordinary people, it had far too many shortcomings for knights like them to enjoy. It had been Charles's senior's strict orders, so he'd played a few rounds with his subordinates, but each time he'd come away feeling only a vague dissatisfaction, a stifled frustration.
He understood it was a good game. He could sense that much, at least — but that was all it was.
Kyle had declared he would change the rules so knights could enjoy it too, but the Commander remained skeptical.
Who knows how long he'll keep at it. All I can do is hum along for a reasonable while.
So long as the Lord of the House had sanctioned board games, indulging the master's stubbornness was a knight's duty. A version of Kylegalli that knights could truly enjoy wouldn't appear overnight, so Kyle would doubtless keep coming and going from the training grounds for some time.
Frankly, wouldn't it be far more efficient to forget about knights like them and design some other game for the people of the territory instead──
"......Hm?"
──That was precisely how much he'd been thinking about it.
The moment he glanced toward the corner of the field, the Knight Commander rubbed his eyes and looked again, wondering if he'd seen wrong.
But the scene before him didn't change. No — it had changed from a moment ago, in fact.
This was not the tableau he'd seen moments before: three knights resting under the tree while Kyle sat beside his personal maid, lost in thought.
"How's this distance?"
"Still a bit indecisive, my lord!"
"Good... and here?"
"Ohh! At this range, it would at least take a moment to reach the bell...!!"
They were setting up Kylegalli.
Except.
The bell sat not on a table, but on the ground itself.
And the three knights were not seated — they stood, each of them ten meters away from it.
"Here we go — five circles!"
"Hahp!!"
"Mine first!"
"The hell you will!?"
TAK!
The instant Kyle drew the card, all three knights bolted for the bell at once, tangling into one another as they scrambled to strike it. They slammed into each other's bodies, stretched out their arms to block and interfere, each checking each in a frenzied melee.
On the surface it looked no different from their training — yet the three knights were more absorbed in it than they had been in anything all day.
To the Knight Commander, it was a spectacle he simply could not comprehend...