The journey back took a week.
From the red hills to Northern Bauxi.
From Northern Bauxi to Central.
From Central downriver to the coast.
Seven days of heat, dust, and repetition—long enough for their footprints to fade behind them, long enough for news to outrun them again.
The plains had changed while they were gone.
Not the grass. Not the sky.
The people.
Villages appeared as they passed, no longer cautious, no longer hiding behind doorways and tree-lines. Men came out openly. Women stood with arms folded, studying the rifles and the packs. Children ran alongside the horses until they ran out of breath. They watched the Germans move with something that wasn't fear anymore.
Expectation.
Everyone had heard.
The red earth had been found.
The giant prince had walked into the interior and returned.
Word traveled faster than rivers.
And everywhere they stopped—everywhere Njoh translated—questions rose like smoke.
Would Germany stay?
Would Germany protect them?
Would Germany help them break free of tribute and horse lords and distant masters?
Oskar answered the same way every time.
Calm. Measured. Careful.
"Your fate is in your own hands," he said. "God gave you free will. You must decide what kind of future you want."
He let that hang long enough for it to hurt.
"Germany will trade," he continued. "Germany will not command."
Some nodded as if relieved to hear it.
Some looked disappointed—as if they had hoped for a savior with a sword.
Some simply stared, thinking.
Oskar kept walking anyway, because he could not give them a clean answer without giving them a chain.
Njoh did not speak to Oskar during those days.
Not unless translation required it.
He stayed close—but not close in the way a companion stayed. He walked slightly behind, slightly to the side, a measured distance that said: I remember the red hill. I remember the spear.
Instead, he attached himself to Karl.
Njoh was not foolish. He had seen how power moved inside the Germans. Oskar was the voice. Oskar was the symbol.
But Karl—small as he was—was the hand that turned promises into crates and schedules. The man who could make things appear.
Even rifles.
They spoke at night when the fires burned low and the stars came out sharp and close. Njoh spoke quietly, never emotional, but every sentence carried the pressure of a man who had decided something.
"Words are not enough," Njoh said. "Not here."
He spoke of protection. Of alliances that could not depend on speeches. Of tribes that would never be free so long as the Fulɓe rode unchallenged across the grasslands, collecting tribute like it was nature itself.
Karl listened.
Karl hesitated.
Then Karl—careful, always careful—spoke back.
Not directly. Never directly.
But he spoke of Europe rearming. Of paperwork and schedules. Of old rifles being replaced by new ones. Of warehouses that would soon fill with equipment stamped "obsolete," not because it was useless, but because Germany was becoming… modern.
He was speaking, in other words, of Oskar's reforms.
Of the new army being shaped.
The future 8th Army.
"One hundred thousand men," Karl murmured, firelight glinting in the lenses of his spectacles. "An army that size doesn't replace its equipment piece by piece. Not under Oskar's command."
Njoh watched him without blinking.
"When it modernizes," Karl continued quietly, "it replaces everything."
He adjusted his glasses, a small habitual motion that meant he was choosing his words with care.
"There will be… availability," he said at last. "Not immediately. But soon."
Njoh did not ask questions.
He understood.
What he offered was not a return to the old coastal trade, but a revision of it—without the old violence. No forced labor. No chains. This time his people would work willingly, farming cash crops, gathering minerals, panning gold from rivers. They would trade honestly for rifles, for ammunition, for uniforms and helmets suited to jungle and grassland alike—whatever Karl could arrange a price for.
Njoh was not asking for a modern European army.
He was asking for enough strength that his people would no longer be helpless before men like the Fulɓe.
Karl did not give his word.
But he did not close the door either.
Oskar heard of it before the third village.
He did not react the way a normal prince would have.
He did not forbid it.
He did not bless it.
He only called Njoh aside once, briefly, where the others couldn't hear—beneath a tree whose shadow cut the sun into manageable pieces.
"If you choose this path," Oskar said quietly, "then it is your choice. Not Germany's."
His eyes held Njoh's.
"Do not say later that we forced your hand."
Njoh bowed his head.
"I accept that," he said. "I will not blame you for the road my people will walk."
And for the first time since the red hill, something like warmth returned—thin, cautious, but real.
Njoh respected Oskar, even now, because Oskar had offered something no other colonial power offered willingly:
Space.
Choice.
Njoh also understood something else, even if he would never say it aloud:
Oskar was a ruler.
And a true ruler protected his own people first, and would not easily send them to die in distant lands in other people's wars.
That was not cruelty. That was reality.
Njoh could respect that.
Oskar walked on with his thoughts locked carefully behind his face.
Karl and Njoh did not know what he knew.
They could not—because unlike Oskar, they had not seen the future.
Oskar had. And as a man from that future, he knew that the choices he had made here could one day turn into war between tribes. He knew that trading weapons was not a smart long-term solution. He knew how easily agreements hardened into grudges, how quickly preparation became escalation if it slipped beyond control.
But he also knew something else.
1914 was approaching fast.
In the half-remembered documentaries and fragments of history from his previous life, the African theater of the First World War was never clean, never small, and never gentle. He remembered names more than dates—Fulani. Duala. Cameroon.
He remembered that when the Great War came, the Fulani would not love Germany—but they would hate France more. France threatened their autonomy, their power, and their old systems, including slavery. That mattered. It shaped loyalty. It shaped who picked up a rifle and for whom.
He also remembered that the Duala, in his old timeline, had turned against Germany—and for good reasons. Germany had tried to push them from their lands, and people did not forgive that.
But this time, he believed things would be different.
In this timeline, if war came, Cameroon would not stand divided.
The south and the interior would stand on Germany's side—both invested in Germany remaining the ruling power, both tied to it by trade, agreements, and mutual survival. And Germany would be tied to them in return.
Because Oskar knew how the war would come.
From the north—France.
From the southeast—the Belgians, out of the Congo.
From the west and possibly the sea—Britain.
And those empires would not hesitate to arm and forcefully mobilize colonial soldiers by the tens and hundreds of thousands—Indians, Africans, anyone they ruled—sending them forward in wave after wave. Not because it was humane, but because it was cheap.
Cameroon was massive—as large as Germany itself.
Germany could not defend land that size with European troops alone, not while its army was already locked into a continental war. If Germany was to survive in Africa at all, it would need native allies who knew the land and had reasons to fight.
Oskar felt, briefly, like an evil schemer.
Like he was using everyone here.
And he hated that feeling.
He did not want to be a cliché savior. He did not want to "civilize" anyone at gunpoint. He wanted to build his corridor, secure Germany's position, and let people live—to preserve their land, their history, their traditions as much as possible.
But history did not reward purity.
History rewarded leverage.
Oskar stared out across the grasslands as the sun bled into evening and thought, with quiet, bitter clarity:
If war comes, I want Cameroon ready.
Then he forced the thought back down again.
Because part of him still wanted to believe in something cleaner—that the war would not come, that all of this planning would prove unnecessary, that this time history might choose a different path.
He hoped it would.
He truly did.
As they traveled, Northern Bauxi Town came into view.
And this time—when it rose out of the green and red—it was already alive.
A hundred men worked the site. Trees fell with steady rhythm. Earth was leveled. Rough docks took shape where canoes now tied up instead of drifting. Smoke rose in thin, disciplined columns—the kind that did not mean camping.
It meant permanence.
Central Bauxi was further along still.
Two hundred men. Storehouses. The first ribs of fortifications. Lines measured, stakes hammered, trenches cut and packed. The corridor was no longer a dream spoken over maps.
It was becoming real—fast.
Oskar gathered the Eternal Guard there.
Fifty men now, all still alive and well. Sickness had not taken them—partly because of their gear, partly because every one of them was at the peak of human fitness, hardened, resilient, the kind of men who did not collapse simply because a jungle wished it.
Carter moved at their head. Karl beside him. Njoh stood just far enough away to remain separate—always watching, always guiding when he chose to.
Then they continued to the coast.
Southern Bauxi greeted them with celebration.
There was food. Music. Smoke and laughter. German worker families, soldiers, merchants—people who had built their lives into this edge of the world—came to see the prince return. And natives came too, drawn by rumor and curiosity, by the word that a giant German prince had found red soil and made bargains without slaughter.
For a time they ate and spoke and traded promises like coins.
Oskar spoke to the tribes again, trying—partly succeeding—to solidify relations. He held Njoh in high regard, and he made that visible. He treated all equally in public, but anyone with eyes could see where he placed weight.
If circumstances were different, Oskar would have chosen the Duala as his strongest ally without hesitation.
But for now he kept his balance.
He promised investment. Schools. German language instruction. Tools and knowledge that could strengthen Njoh's people—because there were no German books written in the Duala tongue, and if they wished to learn, the first bridge would have to be German.
Njoh did not reject it.
He reassured Oskar that his father—the king—would value cooperation.
And even if the Duala remained a vassal kingdom, Njoh said, if Germany treated them fairly, they would be loyal vassals of Great Germany.
After that, farewells were spoken. Hands were shaken. Promises made carefully—like men placing stones into the foundation of something that might someday become either a house…
or a fortress.
Oskar boarded the transport last.
Njoh stood at the shore, smiling up at the giant of a prince. And when the ship began to pull away, Njoh raised his voice over the horns and the engines and the cheering crowd.
"My friend!" he called. "You said God gave me free will—and you have given me the freedom to choose."
Oskar turned, caught by the words.
Njoh's voice carried across the water—thin, but sharp.
"I will not fail you," Njoh shouted. "I will prove your faith in me was well placed. And I will believe in you—the one who stands close enough to God to speak in the same sentence. You big man… you who holds the power of a hundred men!"
For a moment Oskar stood on deck in stunned silence.
The horns blew. The engines rattled. People cheered farewell.
No normal man would have heard those words clearly.
But Oskar did.
Njoh saw it on his face—that brief flicker of what did you just say?—and Njoh only smiled wider, as if the point had landed exactly where he intended.
Then, as the ship pulled farther away, Njoh knelt.
Not in drunken theatrics.
Not in weakness.
In ceremony.
He knelt with his people, heads lowered, until the ship became a smaller shape… and then a line… and then nothing but horizon.
Only then did he rise.
After that, Njoh turned to meet Administrator Ebermaier.
Words were exchanged. Documents laid out. Terms set with ink and seals.
An alliance formed—quietly. Not with Germany in Berlin, but with German Cameroon, the authority that actually stood on their border.
The Duala were declared not merely a protectorate…
…but a partner.
Non-aggression. Mutual respect. Trade in goods—and arms. Military assistance if needed. German advisors. Duala soldiers defending Germany's interests in Cameroon if called upon.
Oskar—far out at sea, on a ship headed back to Germany with Karl—knew nothing of it, at least for the time being.
When Africa finally fell away behind them—green shrinking into blue, then into nothing at all—Oskar stood on deck with Karl and watched the horizon like a man trying to read the future from water.
He was not entirely satisfied.
He had done what he came to do. Found the red earth. Marked the towns. Secured the funding. Prevented bloodshed—so far.
That mattered.
And still… he allowed himself hope.
That fifty years from now—one hundred years from now—people in Cameroon might remember this beginning not only as conquest, but as something more complicated.
Something that did not begin with fire.
Beyond Africa, his thoughts turned forward—toward a single year he could not stop seeing behind his eyes.
A year like a blade.
He knew what waited there.
And for the first time since setting foot on the red hills, Oskar felt the weight of it settle again in his chest.
1914 was coming.
And he wasn't gambling on peace.
He was gambling on time.