Oskar lay on his back in the wet sand for a long moment, chest rising and falling as the warm rain cooled the heat still trapped in his skin. Salt clung to his lips. His heart still hammered with the aftertaste of stupid courage. And in his hand, like proof that the sea had not swallowed him, was the torn remainder of the reef shark.
He stared at it, then at the gray sky, and laughed once, breathless.
"I'm a crazy bastard," he muttered at himself.
Then his stomach reminded him of something far less poetic.
He was hungry, which usually was the part the world always forgot when it wrote about heroes. It forgot that heroes had bodies, and bodies ran on fuel. Oskar was a man built like a siege engine: over two meters tall, close to two hundred kilograms of dense muscle and bone, with a metabolism that burned like a furnace. On heavy days—training days, fighting days, days like this—ten thousand calories was not gluttony. It was maintenance.
So, without ceremony, he brought the shark meat to his mouth and bit down.
It was firm, dense, and chewy. Raw flesh that should have tasted like horror, yet somehow did not. He chewed, swallowed, and felt a strange, ridiculous satisfaction bloom in his chest.
It tasted… fine.
Not delicious. Not civilized. But not disgusting either. Like chicken, in the blunt way the mind translated everything it did not want to think too deeply about.
He ate until the strip dwindled to almost nothing, until only bone, skin, and ruined cartilage remained. Then he tossed the remains aside, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and let out a satisfied burp that felt almost comically human after everything he had just done.
Above him the rain thinned as the clouds drifted inland.
Then the sun broke through. Warm light poured across the coastline, turning the wet sand gold and his pale skin almost luminous. For a heartbeat, Oskar simply sat there and let the heat sink into him, watching the dark shapes of the convoy draw closer as tugboats guided the ships toward the half-built harbor.
He almost forgot himself, almost. But then the sound came. A soft, familiar buzzing. Which made Oskar's whole body twitch on instinct, as an ugly memory from another life cut through him: drones, rotors, death falling from the sky.
But this was not a drone. It was worse. It was a mosquito.
The little bastard settled on his left shoulder as if it owned him. Oskar watched it calmly, almost curious, as it pressed its needle-like mouthpart against his skin and tried to pierce.
It failed. The tiny proboscis bent slightly, like a weak blade meeting armor.
Oskar smirked.
The mosquito tried again. Then again. Stubborn, patient, and infuriatingly confident. On the fourth attempt, it finally found a softer angle and pierced. Oskar felt the faintest sting, and then the insect began to drink slowly.
Very slowly for his blood was thick, dense, heavy, almost wrong in its richness. The mosquito's abdomen swelled with effort, as if it were trying to haul a stone uphill through a straw.
Oskar let it have one second, just one. Then his hand came down with a flat slap.
A tiny burst of blood speckled his skin. He stared at the smear, then cursed softly.
"Damn mosquitoes… little devils."
And as if the sea and jungle heard the insult and accepted it as a challenge, more came.
One became two. Two became five. Five became ten, then twenty, until the air around him began to buzz as if the world itself had turned into a living hive. Oskar slapped, flailed, snapped, and cursed, irritation rising into genuine fury, but it did not matter.
This place did not merely have a few mosquitoes. It had mosquitoes the way war had bullets. An environmental weapon. A constant pressure. An enemy that could not be intimidated.
For the first time since diving into shark water, Oskar's confidence cracked into something closer to disgust. Tarzan fantasies of being half naked in the jungle died fast out here.
"Alright," he muttered. "Enough."
He grabbed what remained of the shark bones, then immediately realized there was no point. He was not going to stand on the beach and eat while being drained alive by a swarm. He dropped the bones and ran.
Barefoot, half-naked, still in white underclothes, hair wet and skin shining, Oskar sprinted down the sand like a lunatic prince fleeing a war fought with wings and needles.
The buzzing followed him.
Not a few insects. Not an annoyance. A thickening haze, rising from wet ground and rotting vegetation as if the air itself had begun to vibrate. The mosquitoes did not scatter when he ran. They pursued, relentless and tireless, born for this place in a way no man ever was.
The swarm became a cloud.
Oskar cursed and plunged forward without thinking, diving toward the river mouth as if it were salvation.
It was not.
The water swallowed him, warmer than the sea, thick and brown-green, carrying the weight of the land itself. Silt clouded instantly around his body, reducing the world to arm's length. This was no clean river. It was brackish water, the uneasy marriage of salt and fresh, a place where rules blurred and predators adapted.
Something brushed his leg. He kicked instinctively and pushed deeper.
Under the surface, he caught glimpses of life that felt wrong in its abundance: fish flashing like silver knives, pale jointed crabs clinging upside down to mangrove roots, long smooth shapes slipping away into the murk, and something flat and wide—stingray-like—pressed against the bottom, so still it looked like part of the mud until it shifted.
The water was alive and possibly hungry.
He powered through it anyway, lungs burning, muscles driving him forward as if force alone could make this place obey. The current tugged at him sideways, trying to pull him into channels he could not see, into darker water that smelled faintly of rot.
Then his feet struck something solid.
Oskar surged upward and hauled himself onto the opposite bank.
The ground there was not truly ground. It was sand mixed with roots and mud, half-solid, half-living. His weight sank with every step. The surface squelched and shifted as if it resented being trusted. Mangrove trees clawed at the shoreline, their exposed roots arching like ribs, slick with algae and insects. Everything smelled wet: wet wood, wet leaves, wet decay.
This land did not dry, it fermented.
Oskar took three steps before sharp movement caught his eye. A snake slid off a low branch, thick-bodied and patterned, dropping into the undergrowth with a sound like wet rope. Another rustle followed, something heavier retreating just out of sight. He felt eyes on him that he could not locate.
Then the mosquitoes found him again, nearly instantly.
They did not drift in or slowly approach. They erupted from the shadows as if the forest itself had exhaled them. Oskar slapped his neck, shoulder, and ribs, smearing blood across his skin, not all of it his. He hissed in frustration and pushed forward, deeper into the trees, where the vegetation grew thicker and the air heavier.
And as he ran, it became brutally clear why no one lived here. Not because of one great danger, but because of everything.
Water that drowned slowly. Ground that never truly held. Insects that drained you while you slept. Snakes you never saw until it was too late. Heat that never relented. Rain that never truly ended.
This place did not kill quickly. It exhausted, it infected, it eroded. Only men foolish, stubborn, or powerful enough to fight it every single day could hope to stay.
Oskar ran anyway.
Because somewhere ahead—beyond the buzzing, beyond the roots and mud and hidden teeth—there were the sounds of axes.
Steel on wood. Human noise. Order being forced into green chaos.
Then, between the trees, he finally heard it clearly. People cutting trees with axes, saw teeth biting into wood. A man yelling, "Ah, fuck!"
And beneath it all, the rhythmic crack of wood splitting—steady, relentless, like a heartbeat made of iron and labor.
Oskar followed the sound like a starving man following firelight. When he broke out of the rainforest into a cleared lane, the world snapped into focus.
Before him was not wilderness, but a sight of true work.
A thousand men—no, more now, because the convoy behind him was bringing another wave and turning this place into something that could actually grow. For three months the island had been under constant assault: day shifts, night shifts, rain shifts. Every hour wrestled from rot and insects. Every meter of ground fought for and made to hold.
German workers moved through the clearing in disciplined chaos.
Teams hauled logs thicker than a man's torso. Others drove stakes and laid crude frames for future structures. Lines of men dug drainage trenches and ditches that cut the earth like scars, directing water away from where crops would one day grow and where foundations would someday need to stay dry. The work was muddy, humid, punishing—and yet the system held.
Because the men weren't barehanded peasants. They were well equipped German's.
Waterproof leather boots—thick soles, reinforced toes. Gloves that covered wrists and forearms. Goggles against sawdust and insects. Helmets… and on top of the helmets, mosquito veils—nets hanging like ghost fabric around faces.
Even the children had netted hats, moving between adults like little beekeepers, eyes wide, cheeks smeared with sweat and curiosity.
And everywhere, smoke.
Campfires ringed the work sites in dozens of small circles, fed stubbornly even after rain—wet wood, oil-soaked scraps, whatever would burn. The smoke hung low and bitter, stinging the throat, clinging to clothes, soaking into hair.
It wasn't comfortable, but comfort wasn't the point. It simply helped drive back the mosquitoes—at least enough that the men could work without going mad.
Oskar felt his breathing ease the moment the smoke touched him. It was disgusting, and wonderful, smart.
Then the workers saw him and the entire clearing froze in a ripple. Because the Crown Prince of the German Empire—huge, pale, scarred, bare-chested, wearing only white underclothes—stepped out of the jungle like some myth that had gotten lost and wandered into the wrong story.
Wet blond hair slicked back. Icy blue eyes calm. Rainwater still dripping from his skin.
For a heartbeat nobody moved.
A foreman opened his mouth, unsure whether to salute, scream, laugh, or call the doctor.
Oskar lifted a hand casually.
"At ease," he said, breathing hard, smiling as if this was completely normal. "I'm just checking how you're doing."
Several men exchanged uneasy looks, but none of them laughed.
Because this was not some ordinary prince stumbling out of the jungle half-dressed and half-mad.
This was the Iron Prince.
The man who did impossible things, survived them, and somehow made everyone else feel foolish for being surprised.
Behind the line of workers, the real machines of the operation moved.
Trucks.
There were not many of them yet, but there were enough to matter. Muscle Motors work-trucks, fitted with thick tires and high clearance, roared and coughed through the mud, dragging loads that would have taken fifty men and a prayer in the old system. Some had been fitted with crude makeshift cranes: timber frames, pulley blocks, chains, and winches that lifted cut trunks onto flatbeds with ugly, practical efficiency.
Steel, rope, engine power, and human stubbornness. A bridge between eras.
Oskar's eyes tracked it all automatically. This was not a picturesque colonial scene. This was an industrial front line.
Karl was not here yet. That much was obvious. If Karl had been present, he would already have been shouting, already trying to wrap Oskar in a towel, already turning this entire absurd incident into paperwork, a medical report, and a personal accusation.
Without Karl, the men simply stared.
Oskar ignored the looks and walked along the logging trail, mud sucking at his bare feet, heat and humidity clinging to him like a second skin. With every step, the reality of the place became clearer.
He had chosen this island because it was empty.
No village hugged this ground. No nearby people farmed it, lived on it, buried their dead here, or marked it as sacred. There was nothing human to take, no homes to clear, no fields to seize. There was only the raw, hostile geometry of nature.
And the geometry was perfect.
The island stretched roughly ten kilometers from the sea mouth toward the inland narrowing of the river, and at most it was perhaps two kilometers wide: a long, narrow strip of land pinned between the branches of the Sanaga and the Atlantic itself. River on both sides. Sea to the west. A natural lock. A choke-point that could be held with walls, bridges, guns, and discipline.
A port here could become the mouth of everything inland. One day this corridor would carry rails, trucks, and bauxite: red soil turned into aluminum, aluminum turned into aircraft, aircraft turned into power.
He had chosen it because it was the best foundation.
Now he understood something else. It was empty for a reason. This place was not "unused." It was unwanted.
The ground was too soft, too wet, too shifting. The air was too thick. The heat too constant. The rain too stubborn. The insects too vicious. The water too full of things with teeth. A man could die here in a dozen ways without ever hearing a gunshot: shark water at the mouth, crocodiles upriver, stingrays in the shallows, snakes in the roots, bees or wasps that struck like flying knives if the wrong tree was disturbed, and mosquitoes—an army so small it could not be fought properly, carrying sickness like invisible bullets.
A death trap. A slow grinder. A place that did not kill quickly, only steadily, through rot, fever, exhaustion, and mistakes. No wonder nobody lived here.
Oskar's mouth curled faintly.
"Good," he murmured. "Then we won't be displacing anyone."
In his old world, he had learned the only way human beings ever defeated places like this. You did not simply "live" in a swamp.
You remade it.
His mind flashed to China, to Suzhou, a city raised amid the marshland and waterways of the Yangtze delta. By all natural logic, such a place should have remained difficult, unstable, and wet forever. Yet people had forced order onto water through canals, piles, drainage, stone, trade, and patience, until a place that had no right to become wealthy had become one of the jewels of civilization.
Then he thought of Helsinki, the Finnish capital: marshy, cold, awkward ground, chosen and shaped because position mattered more than comfort. The true foundation had never been the soil itself. It had been what the place controlled, what it connected, and what it protected.
That was what this island was. A foundation of geography, not comfort. And geography could be exploited. Comfort could be engineered.
This island would not remain nature's forever. If they stayed, if they endured, if they built carefully enough and brutally enough, it would become theirs.
Ahead, the clearing widened. And there it was, southern Bauxi Town. Not a town yet, not truly, but the bare roots of one.
On the western end near the sea, the harbor works were already visible through gaps in the clearing: rough piers, stacked supplies, cranes, and half-framed warehouses rising out of mud and timber. Much of the settlement remained hidden behind the outer ring, because the first priority had not been beauty, comfort, or elegance.
It had been defense and control.
A wooden palisade wall, simple but functional, wrapped around the core like a crude fist. Guards in gray coats, black boots, and mosquito-net hats stood on raised platforms with rifles ready, scanning the treeline and riverbanks as if expecting the jungle itself to attack.
Only one main gate stood open, a thick wooden throat in the wall, and from it a dirt road ran inland toward the logging site. That road forked soon after. South, a bridge was nearly complete, reaching toward the southern bank in raw timber and iron: the first real link of expansion. North, there was only cleared ground, stumps, survey stakes, and men with axes still fighting to make enough space for the northern bridge to begin.
Around the town itself, another war had already started.
Drainage.
Ditches and pipe trenches fed into channels, dragging water away from the places where foundations, roads, storage yards, and future crops would need to survive. Near the perimeter, the first concrete and stone works had begun as well: an early sea wall and flood barrier, not yet strong enough to encircle the whole island, but enough to protect the core where people slept, stored supplies, and built the port.
Oskar felt something settle in his chest.
Satisfaction.
Not because nature was being destroyed, but because it was being answered. Not with chaos, but with order.
Here, there would be fewer mosquitoes not because God had blessed the ground, but because men had brought smoke, fire, drainage, walls, rules, and discipline. Soon there would be steel pilings driven deep into the mud until the swamp screamed. Stone embankments. Concrete sea walls. Raised roads. Reinforced foundations. A city lifted above floodwater and tides, so long as it was maintained like any machine worth keeping alive.
Looking at that wet, hostile hellhole, Oskar knew there was only one honest word for what had to happen next.
Not settling, not mere building, but Terraforming.
Oskar walked toward the unfinished fortress-port, rain drying on his skin and mosquitoes thinning behind him in the smoke.
Hellhole or not, he had chosen this place. And now he would force it—slowly, brutally, intelligently—to become livable.
He would remold it into his image.