Humus

[Code Name] Humus

[Gender] Male

[Combat Experience] 18 Years

[Place of Birth] Columbia

[Date of Birth] Feb 20

[Race] Forte

[Height] 185cm

[Infection Status]

Confirmed Infected by medical examination.

[Physical Strength] Standard

[Mobility] Standard

[Physical Resilience] Excellent

[Tactical Acumen] Normal

[Combat Skill] Standard

[Originium Arts Assimilation] Standard

Humus is the de facto supervisor of a disposal plant in the Columbian wilderness. Referred by a local field office operator, he came to Rhodes Island for Oripathy treatment. He provides his services to Rhodes Island as a member of the Engineering Department, as well as assisting with the disposal of solid waste.

Imaging tests show the indistinct outlines of internal organs, obscured by abnormal shadows. Originium granules detected in the circulatory system. The subject is confirmed to be infected with Oripathy.

[Cell-Originium Assimilation] 13%

Multiple Oripathy lesions found inside the body. Fortunately, they are low in volume and relatively sedate. Further close examination of the lesions are required in future treatments.

[Blood Originium-Crystal Density] 0.30u/L

Look at this list. His Oripathy's condition is actually pretty severe, though all the bodily indices we measured are pretty decent. Especially his vital capacity. It's twice mine! He's a case that's very much worth researching!

—Warfarin

Maybe you just gotta get out more.

—Gavial

When our Logistics operator chatted with the sturdy Forte and showed him around Rhodes Island and to his dorm room, she most likely didn't expect that, in merely three days, his room would already have transformed into a terrifying labyrinth constructed of second-hand wares, self-made tools, and a wide assortment of parts. What's even more terrifying is the fact that there are more of these things by the day.

With the room having become so jampacked with miscellany that the door could barely be closed, Logistics had a small scare—if it took him only three days to fill his room with all this stuff, it's not hard to imagine how it could start spilling outside in another three days.

Humus gave his assurance that this would not happen and that he would have his dorm room cleaned up himself. Not entirely convinced, the Logistics operators waited for a week.

After a week, Humus personally invited Logistics to pay his room a visit. Aside from an overall lack of space and the walls looking somewhat different in color, the room was in perfect order. At the very least, it no longer had any junk lying around.

'Sorry for the trouble,' the Logistics operator said. 'It must've been a lot of work to throw away all that.'

'I didn't throw away anything.'

'Uh, what about all the stuff in your room then...'

'It's all here.'

Humus said as he reached under his bed.

The Logistics operator thought he was going to dig something out and was just about to tell him not to bother, only to hear a bang. It seemed Humus had hit some kind of switch under the bed.

Then, a large, extendable metal box gradually extended out of what seemed to be merely an excavator decoration. The box kept extending and extending until it reached the floor, upon which its door automatically opened. Inside was an extendable shelf, packed with all the second-hand items, self-made tools, and parts from a week ago.

'This is a fifth of it,' Humus said from underneath his bed with a slightly stuffy voice. 'Another fifth was used to build the storage system. Do you want to see the other three-fifths? I gotta use the controls under my bed to bring them out of the other walls, though it's gonna take some time.'

Humus is skilled at making strange inventions, but he is even more skilled at recycling the usable parts of any industrial products that have been thrown away.

When throwing away industrial products, most people's instinct is to shuck whatever is still usable and throw away what isn't, yet the term 'throw away' doesn't seem to exist in Humus's dictionary. The mindset that best corroborates this is the 'Humus Cycle' well-known among our operators. He made a TV out of bread machine parts. Then, after the TV stopped functioning, he made a space heater with it. Afterwards, he made an electric cooker with its parts.

When Closure caught wind of this rumor, she jokingly gave him a completely rusted metal file cabinet that she had just dug out of storage to see what he could do with it. The next day, an embarrassed Humus told her that the cabinet was so rusted that not even he could make anything of practical value out of it.

Just as Closure was about to tap his shoulder and tell him that there are things that you just gotta toss out, he took out a handmade burdenbeast figure, made from the last usable bits of steel scavenged from the cabinet. Its head even had two rusted spots, standing in for its eyes.

It's thanks to this unique talent that Humus quickly became Rhodes Island's leading waste disposal consultant. Although his suggestions can be fairly outlandish at times, each and every Engineering and Logistics operator admits that his arrival at Rhodes Island has improved our recycling efficiency by a considerable margin.

Aside from 'innovative inventions' and recycling materials, Humus also has a few shady tricks up his sleeve. For example, he can pick locks with steel wires, unlock popular Columbian terminal control systems without the password, and make coins from scrap metal that visually can't so much as fool a three year old, but can nonetheless be used in vending machines.

This kind of 'knowledge' is trivial, unbecoming, and yields little result for the effort put in. Often, he arrives at the outcome without ever achieving a thorough understanding of the process. When given instructions to walk through step-by-step, he will always achieve satisfactory outcomes. For instance, on one pitch-black night, out of plain sincerity, he helped a Perro girl he didn't know unlock the Rhodes Island Cafeteria's kitchen door with a hairpin she found on the ground, and the two helped themselves to all the food they could grab at the cafeteria that night.

From another perspective, his skills have also surprisingly come into use during certain field operations. For example, when the administrator of a nomadic city that Rhodes Island was in discussions with for a potential partnership refused to meet with our negotiator, Humus learned the administrator's usual travel schedule and made some arrangements such that his tire would burst at a stretch of road that he frequently passed through, thus ensuring the two sides would finally meet...

There are many other similar examples, and all of Humus's tricks, his obsessively frugal mentality, and his 'inventions' all seem to be have originated from his decade-long tenure in the solid waste disposal plant in the wilderness.

[Classified Log]

Columbia's official advertising campaigns portray the vast wilderness as a place of hope where a man can achieve his dreams. Many of those who come from the frontiers tell us that while they are not without hope, to your average Pioneer, the hope that can be found there is simply too insignificant. And the solid waste disposal plants, commonly referred to simply as 'disposal plants' or even 'landfills,' are the places with the least hope.

In principle, the plants are the lowest of all the facilities found on the frontiers, staffed only by criminals allowed to serve their harsh sentences there as Pioneers. Those who work there do not even have the right to leave without permission.

Yet, there are just as many innocents, those who offended the wrong person, and those stubbornly unable to yield any profits who have been sent to the disposal plants. When surrounded by fierce criminals, it is only natural for the place to fall to the lowest of low.

Fortunately, Humus stood up.

At first, he was simply a hardy punk, new on the block, who caught Oripathy when handling contaminated scrap metal. But he did not give in after he was infected. Instead, he started using all kinds of junk to put together a set of very bulky protective equipment. Everyone thought he was as much of an idiot as he was unlucky, but right before embarking on another similar mission, the worker in charge of retrieving scrap metal came to him, embarrassed.

After he was done recovering the metal, the man was completely drenched in sweat and exhausted as he got himself out of Humus's protective equipment. Everyone mocked him as 'Unlucky Sap Jr.' However, when out of PR concerns the higher-ups sent a doctor to give everyone at the plant checkups and Oripathy diagnoses, 'Unlucky Sap Jr.' was the only one out of those who had handled the contaminated metal to not be infected.

And just like that, Humus realized that even though he too was just more trash dumped in the disposal plant, at least he had the right to refuse to simply rot away.

After that, things unfolded as naturally as they could be. With the toolbox he used for teardowns and retrofits in his left hand, and a heavy sickle in his right, he made a few things, got in a few fights, saved a few men, and in the end became the boss of the whole disposal plant. One that everyone, from lowly office workers who were wrongly convicted to merciless burglars, looked up to.

And he was only too willing to impart all his skills and knowledge to them, be it how to read and write or how to pick locks. They all knew that if Humus had only a piece of meat left in his bowl, he'd rather share it with everyone else in the plant and drink the little soup remaining left in the pot. Fortunately, thanks to all the little tricks he has up his sleeve, along with his imaginative thinking, such hardships have never once occurred.

[Classified Log]

[Feb 27, Official Correspondence]

Dear esteemed complainant:

We can sympathize with how you feel as a father, but please understand that all are equal before the law. Your son must be responsible for his actions.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us again.

[Mar 18, Official Correspondence]

Dear esteemed complaint:

Regarding your request for a retrial, after careful consideration, we have reached the conclusion that the court's sentence was reasonable and appropriate. We ask for your understanding.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us again.

[May 5, Official Correspondence]

Dear esteemed complainant:

No retrial is necessary regarding the case listed in your complaint.

[Jun 1, Official Correspondence]

Dear esteemed complainant:

Your son has already chosen to head to the frontier. He has a bright future there. If you want things to stay that way, please stop writing us over and over about a case that has already been settled.

We appreciate your understanding.

[Jun 2, Audio Recording]

Goddammit, gramps. Reason with me here. Yes, all your son did was get into a fight at a bar, but do you know just who he beat up? Even if you don't, surely you know his family? You know how much pressure we faced? Sending him to the frontier was the best we do! You know what kind of sentence they asked for? Life in prison, if not the death penalty!

You'll talk to the press?

Fine, knock yourself out! —Alright, I'll just tell you this much. His family is a major shareholder of the press association. No journalist would dare stick their nose in this case. If it had been any other family, they would've jumped on the story. You don't think it weighs on our conscience that a case that normally would've ended in two days in jail ended up being a twenty-year sentence?!

No... Please don't cry...

*sigh*... I'm begging you. Just stop writing us.