Prince Oskar of Prussia left the riverbank with the firm, martial step of a disciplined young aristocrat.
Inside, Zhan Ge wanted to throw up.
The closer he walked toward the Neues Palais, the more his brain screamed at him. The palace meant people. People meant conversation. Conversation meant… advanced-level, historically-accurate, pre–World War I court German with no slang, no modern phrases, no verbal memes.
One wrong sentence and they would burn him at the stake for witchcraft. Or worse: send him to a psychiatrist who believed in leeches.
He made it halfway up the gravel path, felt the weight of the palace staring at him, and quietly changed course.
"Not yet," he muttered.
Instead of the side entrance, he walked toward a stand of big old trees on the edge of the grounds. To the servants watching from afar, it looked like the prince was taking one of his strange "exercise walks" again.
Which was accurate.
The Oskar of the past year had acquired a habit: when his thoughts tangled, he worked them out of his body.
He reached a sturdy oak, glanced around to make sure no one was close enough to hear him breathe, grabbed a low branch, and pulled himself up.
One pull-up.
Two.
Three.
Four.
The muscles of his new body responded beautifully — lean, strong, well-fed. A far cry from the stiff, undertrained streamer body he'd had before the war and the scarred, sleep-deprived truck driver body he'd had during it.
He kept going until his arms started to tremble and the stiff Prussian coat dug into his shoulders.
Okay. Think.
He hooked his arm over the branch, swung himself up to sit, then climbed higher, boots scraping bark, until he found a fork high enough that the palace couldn't see him clearly and low enough that if he fell, he probably wouldn't die.
He settled there, back pressed to the trunk, legs braced, hidden by leaves and bare branches. From here he could see the river, the palace, and the little people walking around like pieces on some giant strategy board.
He exhaled long and slow.
"Why am I doing this?" he asked himself in Chinese.
Not the pull-ups.
The Germany thing.
If he were honest — brutally honest, the way he sometimes was at three in the morning on stream — his reasons were embarrassingly simple.
First:
Germany's military uniforms looked cool.
He loved the aesthetics. Pickelhauben, field-gray, high collars, sharp lines. German formation drill looked like war ballet. The idea of being a real German officer, in a real German army, in the era when the German army was considered elite?
His inner war nerd squealed.
Second:
He was stuck here.
He was a German prince now. Blonde hair, sharp jaw, pale aristocratic skin. There was no universe where he could stroll into 1904 Beijing and declare:
> "Hello, comrades, I am actually Chinese on the inside.
Please give me a job, a wife, and a streaming setup."
Even if he somehow made it to China, what would he do? He had no normal profession. No trade. No degree. In his first life he had streamed. In his second life he had driven supply trucks.
In this life?
If the Hohenzollerns went into exile like they did in his history, he'd be just another useless exiled prince in some sad Dutch villa, burning through savings, unable to fix a roof or run a shop. No money, no power, no stable identity.
No wife.
No family.
No "good life."
He wanted a good life.
A house.
A wife who didn't despise him.
Children.
Books.
Maybe a garden.
He clung to the title "Prince" not because of pride, but because it was the only viable profession he had.
If the empire falls, I fall with it, he thought grimly. I don't even know how to pound nails into a wall.
Third:
If he helped Germany, maybe there would be no Nazi Germany later.
That thought had crept in slowly, like mold.
In his history, defeat in World War I led to humiliation, revenge fantasies, and the rise of a certain moustached Austrian with catastrophic ideas. If Germany never lost that way — or never fought that way — maybe that entire dark branch of history could be cut off.
No Nazis.
No Holocaust.
No Second World War in Europe as he knew it.
Fourth:
If he played his cards impossibly well, maybe he could become a bridge between Germany and China one day.
As a prince with influence, he might steer German diplomacy, technology, and investments in ways that made China stronger, more prepared. Maybe he could help it modernize faster, avoid occupation, avoid the brutal Sino-Japanese conflicts he knew were coming in his old timeline.
No Marco Polo Bridge Incident.
No Nanjing Massacre.
No millions of Chinese dead in that particular hell.
It was wild. Crazy. Almost delusional.
But as a boy, he had grown up on legends of great men who changed dynasties, raised armies, united states, brought peace. War heroes, strategist-sages, half-mythical generals.
For the first time in any of his lives, he had an actual starting position that made those legends not entirely laughable.
A prince.
In the center of Europe.
Before everything went to shit.
"Maybe," he murmured, gripping the bark, "this is my… 'Mandate of Heaven run'."
Also — and he refused to say this out loud but it was still there —
Fifth:
If he made Germany strong enough, maybe no one would dare attack them.
With overwhelming strength, maybe there would be no Great War at all. The British, French, Russians, Japanese — all of them might decide war wasn't worth it. He had a childishly simple image in his head:
Germany so strong that everyone becomes friends.
No world war.
World peace.
He goes to China for a long, peaceful, educational tour as an honored prince.
He knew it didn't work that way. Power invited resentment. Alliances formed. Balance-of-power politics were brutal.
But the thought was there, soft and stubborn.
If he succeeded, he could fix Europe and Asia.
If he failed, he'd be another dead body in a ditch of history.
He sighed.
"Great. No pressure."
Down below, the Havel flowed calmly.
He thought of what he'd told himself earlier:
If Germany can defeat the British and French, everything changes.
With France crushed and Britain forced to negotiate, the map of Europe would be different. Reparations would flow the other way. Germany could dictate terms, influence borders, steer development. No crippled, embittered Weimar. No Versailles.
But it wouldn't be easy. In fact, from what he knew, it was almost impossible.
Germany was strong — industrially, technologically, militarily — but she was still boxed in. The Royal Navy guarded the seas. Russia loomed in the east. France waited in the west. Italy and Austria-Hungary were unreliable clowns in his memory, more ballast than force multipliers.
I want to help, he thought. I want to fix this. But who am I?
He was the fifth son of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Above him stood:
– Crown Prince Wilhelm, age twenty-two, already involved in state affairs.
– Prince Eitel Friedrich, twenty-one, army officer.
– Prince Adalbert, about to graduate from the Army Academy and join the Guard Corps.
– Prince August Wilhelm, who had just entered the Army Academy.
Below him were Prince Joachim and their sister, both more openly favored than the quiet, weird Oskar who did pull-ups in trees and answered questions with one-word replies.
In the imperial lineup, he was… extra.
An expansion pack.
DLC.
The kind of son you married off to some minor princess, gave a ceremonial post, and forgot about.
According to his original timeline, Oskar would be packed off to the Kiel Naval Academy, educated into a respectable but politically irrelevant naval career, and then watch the empire die before spending the rest of his life as a faded, hollow man in exile.
"No," Zhan Ge whispered. "I am not doing the 'sad exiled prince' route. No rerun of that."
He dug his fingers into the bark.
"Heaven didn't throw me from a Russian truck into a Prussian prince's body just so I could… coast. There has to be more than that."
Ten years.
If he had ten years and didn't waste them, maybe he could twist fate a few degrees. Even a few degrees could be enough to miss the iceberg.
He scanned his internal "to-do list" like it was a strategy game:
– Understand German politics and factions.
– Gain personal strength and credibility.
– Get access to money. Lots of money.
– Get into positions where he could influence military and industrial decisions.
– Stay alive.
– Somehow do all of this while being a socially-anxious, reincarnated logistics driver with zero noble training pretending to be a stoic aristocrat.
"Perfect," he muttered. "What could possibly go wrong."
Then suddenly a voice echoed faintly from below, from the base of the tree — sharp, precise, and slightly annoyed.
"Your Royal Highness! Prince Oskar! If you fell and died, I'd get blamed again, and frankly, I refuse to go to prison for your acrobatics!"
Oskar peered down through the branches.
Standing on the gravel path was Karl von Jonarett — a young court attendant and, very inconveniently, a dwarf.
Karl was barely 135 centimeters tall, broad-shouldered, sharp-featured, and dressed in immaculate palace livery modified perfectly to his proportions. Where other servants whispered or pretended he didn't exist, Karl simply stared up with the unimpressed expression of someone who had been supervising aristocrats since birth.
Karl wasn't like the dwarves of fairy tales — not a creature of myth, but a noble-born man whose body had developed differently. He moved with confidence and unexpected grace, his eyes bright with intelligence and a perpetual layer of sarcasm honed by surviving royal courts.
He planted his hands on his hips.
"Well? Are you going to stay in the tree and govern Prussia from above, or do I need to fetch a ladder for His Highness the Squirrel King?"
Oskar sighed, grabbed a branch, and climbed down.
As he dropped the last meter, landing in perfect balance, he straightened his uniform and slipped into his cultivated persona — the Cold Prince with the one-liner mouth.
Karl dusted off Oskar's shoulder with professional fussiness. "You have bark on your back. Again."
Oskar gave a stiff nod.
Then, in a voice meant to sound aristocratic but instead sounding like an Austrian bodybuilder cosplaying a Prussian prince, he grunted:
"Trees build character."
Karl blinked slowly. "…Yes, Your Highness. Of course they do."
Oskar turned toward the palace.
Karl hurried beside him with rapid, confident steps.
"His Majesty wishes to see you immediately," he announced. "Which means he's impatient, which means he's in a mood, which means I would like to arrive before he blames something on me."
Oskar gave the appropriate response for a Prussian prince trying not to speak too much:
"Time to move."
Karl raised an eyebrow. "Is that… an order? A declaration? A poem?"
"Efficient words," Oskar said in a deep monotone.
Karl muttered, "Efficiently confusing…"
As they walked, Karl looked up at him. "Do you know why the Kaiser wants you?"
"Enlighten me," Oskar said.
"I cannot. I wasn't told. But Major General Ludwig von Birkenhagen just left the office."
Oskar exhaled through his nose.
"Kiel," he said.
Karl paused. "Is that a prediction?"
Oskar gave him a grim nod.
"Naval Academy.
Four years.
No mercy."
Karl stared at him.
"…Your Highness, sometimes I wonder if a demon possessed you last year. And if it did, I hope it's house-trained."
Oskar responded with another one-liner, this time trying to sound intimidating and philosophical:
"Pain is temporary.
The Navy is forever."
Karl ran a hand over his face. "Wonderful. The hero we need. And possibly the one we deserve."
Approaching the Kaiser's Study
The palace corridors echoed with boots and polished shoes. Servants and guards stepped aside as the tall prince and his short but sharp attendant passed.
Karl cleared his throat. "Just… do me a favor, Your Highness."
Oskar glanced down at him. "Speak."
"Try not to give your father one of your… statements."
"What statements?"
Karl pinched the bridge of his nose.
"The ones where you speak like a Prussian statue that came to life and took lessons from an Austrian strongman."
Oskar frowned slightly.
"I speak with power."
"Yes," Karl said dryly, "so much power that half the palace thinks you're preparing to duel trees."
Oskar gave a tiny, solemn nod.
"The trees know what they did."
Karl stopped walking, stared at him, then continued forward with a resigned sigh.
"Very well. If the Kaiser asks why you're strange, I'll simply say you're… devoted to forestry."
Oskar smirked — one of the few real expressions he ever allowed around Karl.
Inside the Kaiser's Study
A guard opened the door.
Oskar entered with perfect military posture, Karl remaining respectfully outside.
Wilhelm II and Crown Prince Wilhelm stood near a map, discussing the siege of Port Arthur.
As Oskar stepped forward and saluted, the Kaiser turned and nodded approvingly.
"Oskar. Good. You're prompt."
Oskar nodded once.
"I'll be faster next time."
The Kaiser blinked. "…Right."
Crown Prince Wilhelm gave a subtle sideways glance, the look of someone wondering if their little brother had recently discovered philosophy, religion, or heavy blunt trauma.
But Wilhelm II cleared his throat and delivered the announcement:
"Oskar, after my discussion with Director von Birkenhagen, it is settled. You will report to the Kiel Naval Academy in half a month."
Oskar bowed, face stoic.
Inside, Zhan Ge was panicking.
Outside, the one-liner machine answered:
"I will crush the curriculum."
A long, fragile silence followed.
Crown Prince Wilhelm coughed politely.
The Kaiser looked like he wasn't sure if his son was confident, insane, or quoting a foreign opera.
But Wilhelm II straightened proudly.
"…Very good, Oskar. I expect you to excel."
Oskar gave a final nod.
"Consider it done."