House Rules (Isekai Ver.)
House rules of Kylegalli, played by the Knight Commander, Rick, Hansen, and Victor.
Since the game had clearly shifted toward something far more physically demanding, I'd half expected the Knight Commander to have the upper hand.
The game, however, was unfolding in an entirely different direction.
"Harass the Commander! Swarm him all at once! Aim for the wrists as much as you can!"
"The cards! Careful, don't crush the cards!!"
"Haha! Hansen, Victor! You think two measly men can hold me back? You've gravely underestimated me!!"
"I'm sorry, two? Don't tell me Rick, you little……!?"
Ding!
"Blocking is all well and good, but perhaps I should claim a card or two myself."
"Why that squat little——!!"
For all the shouting, this was effectively everyone's first time playing. Hansen had tricked the Knight Commander once or twice, and the Commander had very nearly baited Victor with a hair-trigger feint, but the game itself was, at its core, a whirlwind of raw physical brawling. Everyone had fallen for a trick at least once by now, so the deceptions weren't landing quite so easily anymore.
Still, what concerned me wasn't who was winning.
'I suppose it's because the ground here is just packed earth — the bell keeps skidding from its starting point. If the game drags on, that could become a real problem.'
'Someone even slid straight into it at the start and knocked the thing loose. Should I find a more reliable way to fix it in place? Or is a penalty enough to cover it?'
'I did restrict everyone to their right hand, but things are getting heated little by little. That part…… I suppose I can't help it. It was intentional from the beginning, after all.'
Spotting the loopholes, patching the shortcomings. This was so far removed from the original Kylegalli that calling it a brand-new game, freshly born this very day, would hardly be an exaggeration — of course it would have flaws.
So I watched the knights' match with a keen eye, hunting for every last one of them.
And in the middle of tallying up a handful of improvements —
"M, Master Kyle?"
"Hm? Sally?"
"Wh, who do you…… th, think is going to win……?"
Sally asked, her complexion noticeably easier now that the bell rested safely on the ground and she could maintain her hardening magic at leisure. Apparently it had been worth setting the thing down after all.
Who did I think would win, huh.
Going by the current state of things, Victor was dead last while the other three held roughly even hands, and all three knights were singling out the Knight Commander for relentless harassment.
Well then — allow this self-professed board game veteran to make a prediction.
"What about you first, Sally?"
"H, Hansen, sir. The, the Commander is doing his best too, but the harassment is………"
"I'm going with the Commander."
"S, sir?"
"Let's just watch."
Because in my experience.
Something was about to change.
"Hahh…… hahh………"
The Knight Commander, panting hard, paused to catch his breath.
How many sprints had it been already?
Standing still one moment, then bursting into a full-power dash the next, and brawling with three knights using only his right hand — it had drained far more stamina than anyone could have anticipated.
But that didn't mean he could barely move. If anything, all this running around was fun.
And he was hardly the only one gasping for air.
"Hff…… hah………"
"My, my cards………"
"Whew………"
Hansen, who had moved the second most after the Commander; Rick, who had fished in troubled waters between the scuffles; Victor, who hadn't won a single card — all of them were showing unmistakable signs of wear.
As the Knight Commander, even under concentrated harassment, being the first to collapse was something his pride would never permit.
"Rick, you have to draw a card."
"Whew……… I'm, aware of it."
Perhaps because he was locked in on Kylegalli, the tight-lipped squat knight's replies had grown terse — but his eyes flashed as he drew.
Then Hansen drew, a teary-eyed Victor drew, the Knight Commander drew.
Every single card drawn made the whole table flinch. And with a few more rounds to go before Victor ran out of cards entirely, his eyes were the most desperate of all.
How many more rounds did it carry on like that?
"……………"
"…………"
"………………"
"………Ah, hell."
At first they hadn't paid it any mind, but now it was impossible to ignore.
With four players, even a handful of cards was usually enough to match five shapes. So even in rounds with far fewer cards at stake, everyone had sprinted at full power — each small board mattered that much.
But now.
The Knight Commander's card count had already passed seven.
Four players at seven cards each made twenty-eight — and a Kylegalli deck held fifty-six cards in total.
Which meant that in this single round, half the entire deck had been wagered.
"……………"
Only the sound of ragged breathing filled the training grounds. You could hear someone swallow, loud and clear.
Cards that had been drawn with mild, casual tension now sat in their hands like lead.
The Knight Commander had no thought to spare for the sweat streaming down his face; every nerve he owned was fixed on the cards of Rick, Hansen, and Victor.
Victor had nothing left to draw. When his turn came, it simply passed by.
Which meant Victor's card was fixed.
'Four circles. Four circles. Four circles.'
The instant a single circle surfaced among Rick's and Hansen's cards, he would move.
He replayed the plan he had mulled over and over in his head. His stance had long since been primed to run — his upper body stayed ramrod straight for the drawing, but his lower body coiled into a sprinter's crouch. And it was much the same for everyone else.
Clack.
After Rick, Hansen drew. That left Hansen with a single card.
The pot had now climbed past thirty cards.
And Hansen's draw was —
"………O, one circle……!"
The words slipped out, quite by accident, from a player who wasn't even in the game — Kyle's personal maid, apprentice mage, and onlooker.
Technically, that was cheating. The other three might get a pass, but Hansen was the one who absolutely had to remain ignorant of his own card. With that slip, mind games became impossible.
Yet not a single player raised a complaint about it.
They were all too busy sprinting flat-out for the bell.
Dash!!
"Come on………!!"
In sheer desperation, none could match Victor. He was the only player without a card.
Lose this round and he was out, no question about it. Victor had to ring that bell by any means necessary.
His legs, already spent to their last fiber, blazed to life and carried him forward.
"Hah!"
Right behind death-or-glory Victor came Hansen and then Rick in order — and dead last was the Knight Commander, who was, in truth, deliberately throttling his own speed.
He held more cards than either cardless Victor or one-card Hansen, but only four or five of them. Considering Rick, running in first place, still had plenty to spare, the Commander should have been giving it everything he had.
But the Knight Commander had a play in mind. A gamble that might fail — but one he had no choice but to make if he wanted first place.
His eyes gleamed as he watched Victor, Rick, and Hansen.
"Rick! Take the Commander!!"
The one who shouted it was Hansen. With one card left, losing wouldn't eliminate him, but that awkwardly dangling card was only clouding his judgment.
Should he hold back and conserve his strength for later? If he burned out now and failed to ring the bell, the next round would finish him. What about Victor?
A thousand thoughts swirled, but Hansen's choice came down to one: block the Knight Commander.
The Commander might be outpaced by Rick now, but the man always carried a reserve of explosive power that could snatch victory from anywhere. In fact, if he and Victor hadn't been holding the Commander back all this time, Rick would never have climbed into first place at all.
Hansen decided it was time to collect on that debt. Rick, in first with cards to burn, could pin the Commander, and in the meantime Victor could yield him the bell — or Hansen could ring it himself.
And so the squat Rick, hearing the old fogey's orders —
"………Haha! If I just take this one, first place is mine……!!"
"RIIIICK!!!"
"Why should I block the Commander?! If I win this round alone, my cards top forty!!"
Instead of turning toward the Knight Commander, he charged at the bell harder than ever.
Maybe, in the beginning, the three knights' hearts had been aligned. Their fear of the Commander outweighed their focus on the game, and their plan had been to stall — to harass him as long as possible and postpone their scolding to the very last second.
But now the story was different. The only thing left in their heads was victory.
Original Kylegalli would never have stirred such thoughts, but this knight-exclusive rebirth of it had whipped their competitive spirits into a frenzy.
Body crashing into body, sweat pouring, wrestling each other with strength and technique — and while all that was happening, reading each other and waging psychological warfare.
It almost made one wonder if this could really be that stuffy old parlor game at all.
And knights, above all, were creatures of pride. They took pride in their flesh, in their technique, in their aura.
To lose in a contest that demanded all three — that went beyond humiliation. It was enough to drive a man mad with shame.
In this very moment, the alliance of the Squat, the Old Fogey, and the Balding Crown was shattered. What remained was a free-for-all with no one to trust.
And that —
was exactly what the Knight Commander had aimed for.
BOOM! BANG!!
"Move! Get out of the way!!"
"V, Victor! Just a moment, let's negotiate——"
"I'll be taking this!"
"RICK!! I'd rather lose than hand you a single card……!!"
Victor, Hansen, and Rick converged on the bell, hands tangling.
Right hands stacking over right hands, shoulders shoving bodies aside, feet kicking at paths to cut each other off.
An all-out brawl with every part of the body — everything, that is, except the left hands holding the cards.
They were knights, so even this chaos had a certain high level of craft to it — but it was nothing like the opening. They had all run themselves ragged.
'NOW!'
Having confirmed it, the Knight Commander exploded forward.
He had run slow on purpose — because he'd judged that alliance of three was about to crack.
Had he been wrong, he'd have been stripped of his cards before ever drawing near the bell, robbed of everything in the most humiliating fashion. But the Commander's gamble landed clean.
The thrill of a plan actually working flooded through him in an instant, and riding that surge, the Knight Commander drove his foot into the earth, resolved to spend every last scrap of strength he had left.
Only then did Rick and Hansen whip their heads around toward the charging Commander.
"ST, STOP HIM!!!"
Hansen screamed it in a panic — without moving a muscle himself. Even now, he had to keep Victor, who was sprinting for nothing but the bell, in check.
In the end, it was Rick who moved. If Hansen or Victor happened to ring it, fine — but if the Commander rang it, Rick would have to hand over first place.
Having judged exactly that, Rick threw himself at the Knight Commander, swallowing bitter medicine with his own two feet.
"Commander, why don't you take a rest!!"
"Not a chance, Rick!"
But then — why was the man nicknamed the Squat in the first place? No matter how fine a knight he was, the difference in natural height was beyond anyone's remedy.
Against a civilian it wouldn't matter, but the Knight Commander was a knight a cut above even Rick. It was no accident that Rick had, all this time, chosen to hunt for openings rather than meet him head-on.
Aura he had been hoarding all game blossomed from the Knight Commander's body, gathered into his right hand in a single heartbeat, and snatched Rick clean off his feet.
"Urk!?"
Whoosh!
And so, Rick took flight.
The Commander's aura-reinforced strength sent the squat knight sailing. Rick fought back with aura of his own, and even airborne, he would land and lunge again in moments — but by then, it would be too late.
Those few stolen seconds were all he needed.
Having effectively eliminated Rick, the Knight Commander rounded on Hansen and Victor.
The old fogey Hansen grit his teeth.
"If it's come to this………!!!"
In that instant, Hansen's right hand moved in a way it never had before.
The Knight Commander knew exactly what that meant. It was the wind-up for Hansen's signature move — the shoulder throw.
But Kyle had banned that. The Commander grasped it in a flash of instinct.
'He'll take the penalty if it means taking me out of the round?'
If Hansen threw him now, he'd eat the penalty. But the seconds it bought would let Victor reach the bell.
Hansen would be penalized, yes — but not eliminated from Kylegalli outright. At worst, he'd still have his last-chance round to play for.
Charitably, it was exploiting a loophole in the rules. Uncharitably, it was cheating, plain and simple.
House rules, after all, weren't perfect yet — which was exactly what made the stunt possible.
Of course.
That didn't mean the Knight Commander intended to take it lying down.
Slap!
"Wh, what the——!?"
"Trying to shoulder-throw me with one hand? That's arrogance, Hansen!!"
He lightly batted away Hansen's hand as it reached for his wrist to set up the throw.
After all, the man who had taken, and witnessed, Hansen's shoulder throws more than anyone in training was the Knight Commander himself.
When even his whole body wasn't enough, attempting the throw with a single right hand was nothing more than a bigger gamble than the Commander had ever made.
It had only been a light parry, but Hansen's exhausted body wobbled from that alone — and the moment bought was all the Commander needed to lock his gaze on the final objective.
"UWAAAAAAAH!!!!"
And there was Victor, struggling away as he had from start to finish, utterly unchanged.
Hansen's hand had once blocked him, but it had turned toward the Commander now — and Hansen's and the Commander's bodies and legs physically plugged every path.
Victor's hand hovered a hair's breadth from the bell, touching and not touching.
The Knight Commander brought his right hand down.
Two hands crossed over each other — and one of them crushed the bell.
DIINNG———!
The moment the bell tolled, marking the end of the most desperate round yet —
"A, aah…………"
"………I, won."
The hand on the bell was the Knight Commander's.
At the very, very end, what it came down to was pure, unadorned physical strength. Two hands had collided, and the stronger one — the Knight Commander's — had beaten Victor's. That was all.
Having confirmed his victory, the Knight Commander smiled and collapsed where he stood.
Thud.
"Hahh…… hahh…………"
He won. He won.
In the round with the most cards ever wagered — victory.
Boiling up through him came a surge of achievement and raw exhilaration, and the Knight Commander grinned wide. Sprawled on his back on the training grounds, drenched in sweat, his face couldn't have been brighter.
As he lay staring blankly up at the blue sky, someone walked over and looked down at him.
"Well, Commander? What did you think?"
"M, Master Kyle……… whew………"
"Normally we'd have to keep going, since Victor would be the only one eliminated — but everyone's down for the count, you see."
The flung Rick, the old fogey Hansen who'd resisted to the last, the balding-crown Victor who'd lost his final chance — all of them lay sprawled on the training grounds just like the Commander.
With everyone gasping like landed fish, pushing the game any further seemed out of the question.
"So……?"
"The one with the most cards right now is first place. And that would be…… the Commander, obviously."
"……H, haha. HAHAHAHAHA!!!!"
Victory — and first place.
Bursting into delighted laughter at an announcement that couldn't have tasted sweeter, the Knight Commander spoke.
"Master Kyle, you've truly created a magnificent board game."
"Well. The second half felt more like training or exercise than a board game, honestly."
"Perhaps it did. But its roots are Kylegalli all the same, aren't they?"
Winning the game had called something else to mind.
The Knight Commander looked up at Kyle with eyes freshly full of admiration.
"And it needed no extra equipment, either."
"Hm?"
"This can be played with nothing but the original Kylegalli set — the bell, the cards, and a table. Which means this, too, is Kylegalli."
"Well, that's what a house rule is."
"That's precisely what makes it remarkable."
Only now did the Knight Commander understand — every worry he'd ever harbored about Kyle had been utterly wasted.
He needed no talent for swordsmanship and magic like the eldest, no talent for the blade and aura like the second.
The third son of Viscount Byron was blooming, in full glory, a talent that only he possessed.
"Master Kyle, I have one request."
"What is it?"
"During training, or in our free time…… may everyone play this Kylegalli?"
"Aw, why are you asking me that?"
"I, sir?"
"Board games belong to the players who want to play them. Being the creator doesn't grant you some right to stop them. Just make sure you sweet-talk a mage into casting the hardening spell for you."
"………Yes, sir!!"
"Also, call me out to watch whenever you play? I need to observe more if I'm going to fix things. Personally, Hansen deliberately trying that shoulder throw was pretty interesting. Since it doesn't mean elimination anyway, it was his way of trying to guarantee one outcome for a single person — rather than banning it outright, we could treat it as part of the mind games, and either raise the penalty's severity or make it an outright ban only if it gets abused too much. Beyond that, Victor body-blocking people completely also seems a bit problematic, but if we tried to rule that out too, it'd put the brakes on the physical grappling itself — and then there'd be no point in making a house rule at all. Then there's the fact that even when blocked as much as possible, the cards get crumpled little by little — and at that rate, we'd be better off making the cards out of something other than paper, or extending the hardening magic to the cards as well…… though that might be tough. But if we make dedicated cards just for this, we lose the charm that the original Kylegalli can switch to these rules anytime — so do we convert all the cards to special ones? No, if we did that, the budget problem of distributing them across the territory's residents would——"
"……………"