John casually constructed a pillar of dirt, easily leaping one block upwards in height as if jumping over three feet in the air with no prep time was a casual act.

Because with his new body, it was.

While still rising, it was trivial to target the block below himself and mentally place another dirt from his inventory.

Land on the new surface, jump, place another block, repeat.

All the better to see this massive cobblestone tube that led upwards!

Like most objects here, it floated in mid air. All the weight for the structure just sort of failed to connect mass with the concept of gravity or strain or pressure or internal integrity or… Any of that sort of thing.

The bottom was a small tube of glass leading to a hopper, constantly being filled by the drops from above and then sending them off to some sort of complicated storage system he had scanned earlier.

Said drops were being spawned thanks to the endless numbers of mildly confused monsters that were falling down the glass tube to their death… And John wanted to see where they were all coming from!

Hence: Using all that Essential dirt Collected earlier to build a massive dirt pillar. He was going to get up there and see what exactly was INSIDE that huge floating cobblestone tower!

True, it meant the pigs couldn't come. Even now, if John looked over the edge of the one block wide dirt tower, a tiny pink collection of oinking friends were sort of hanging out near the base of his ascent.

But the urge to see how this setup worked was just a tad too strong! SO UPWARDS!

…It was awfully tall though.

The air didn't interact properly with height and stuff, so it wasn't thinner up here and harder to breathe (Although it WAS cooler at least), but it was a bit tricky to determine how high up he was now.

Over a hundred blocks at least, easily.

As he jumped/built his way up to the middle layer of the cobblestone structure, he began the next stage: Constructing a bridge to get closer!

Which was a bit odd here, as expected.

For one thing, his new body not only acted like a magnet for random drops and those strange experience orb things from the killed monsters, no… It also was half the reason why gravity worked.

Because his body was being pulled toward the materials he stood upon.

So when one crouched like this, and attempted to move forward… The attraction levels sort of compounded on themselves and locked him onto the top surface of the material.

Which was how John could now 'stand' with 99.9% of his body OFF the edge, turn around, and then 'reach' with his body's new Placement ability to place a dirt block against the side of his new tower… And UNDERNEATH his currently floating body.

Which gave him room to back up once more, letting him see the new end of the growing dirt bridge, and place the NEXT block on that side surface underneath himself and…

Well, there you go. Horizontal bridge building, with no needed supports or anything because when a block gets too far away from the area being worked on it sort of… Went dormant? Or didn't properly check to see if reality changed?

Like, dirt didn't care about gravity to begin with. But if he had built this thing out of sand (Which DID try to believe in physics occasionally) and that floating structure somehow didn't update a block nearby via flowing water or punching a block or something, the sand would just float there forever.

At least until something caused the sand to notice it wasn't properly being sand, at which point the entire mess would fall to the ground and frantically pretend that it had been properly acting like sand the whole time, no really, it's true!

Anyway, the dirt was good enough to get close to this massive cobblestone tower, and then Scan within the mess.

And it. Was. Awesome!

A grid of three by three stone platforms, with half slabs smack dab in the middle. Each platform surrounded by water streams in pits, to gather the newly spawned monsters… And all the streams leading to a single hole over that glass tube in the middle.

This was one layer of the tower, and each layer only had two blocks of space above the platforms… From what the energies and intent energy in the area was implying, this was to prevent anything too tall from being spawned within the monster generation layer.

Same with the half slabs, as John could feel spider-like energy attempting to form on any space that was two by two blocks in size with a low enough light level… The slabs got in the way, and being less than a full block prevented anything from generating on top of itself too.

Anyway, this layer of platforms and water stream canals was duplicated on the floor above. And the one above that. And again. All the way up to that strange layer way up high… Why stop? Why not just keep repeating this pattern forever?

Even now, John could see the ambient dangerous energy sources being diverted up here, as the most 'ideal' spawning conditions. Most likely the number of dangerous creatures down there on the surface would be much lower than usual thanks to this tower alone, if what he felt from the ambient power held true.

The tower layers would spawn skeletons, zombies, and creepers (Plant kamikaze explosive monsters) on those platforms, the idiots would wander about until they tripped into the water canals, ALL these creatures were horrible swimmers and so get pushed along until…

John watched another skeleton hit the edge of the center pit, then vanish down the glass tube to the unyielding hopper surface far below. WAY too far a fall for the monster to just ignore the damage, despite how 'light' these Essence bodies were.

One layer might take a few minutes for monsters to spawn and eventually fall into the streams, but with a tower THIS tall? The number of creatures falling to their deaths was pretty dang impressive.

It certainly explained why there was such a complicated storage system below. The hopper was shoving all the items into a series of chests connected to a bunch of dispensers, shooting all those tiny materials into a fast flowing water stream on ice that was passing hoppers mostly stuffed with random junk and one sample of a desired item.

Item drops would flow down there in a loop, being filtered into certain hoppers that had room for that one item type, and either be gathered for storage or (if it was full) eventually despawn into raw energy again.

All that complexity had seemed like overkill to John when he first examined the entire setup, but now that he was up here and close enough for the potential monsters to detect him and begin spawning in an effort to hunt him down for consumption?

Well, the number of falling creatures had DRASTICALLY increased from a tiny trickle to an endless parade of mildly confused gravity assassinated death droppers.

Most of the items weren't even being collected down there anymore, which probably explained that odd lever he had observed earlier that would redirect the unsorted excess items into a pit of lava.

Much faster disposal method than waiting for their internal stability to collapse, honestly.

John was considering expanding this dirt platform into some sort of viewing station to better enjoy the monster waterfall experience when he was caught off guard.

"Ba-cluck?"

Slowly floating down the glass death tube, like an angel from on high… Was a chicken.

With an itty bitty zombie on its back. A baby zombie. Wearing armor.

"Rawr?"

A CONFUSED baby zombie. Wearing tiny adorable diamond armor!

John grinned like a mad man as he watched the tiny little guy floating down on his glorious chicken mount. This little dude was so cute! He probably wanted to eat ALL the brains!

…He'd also survive the fall damage, considering the chicken was basically negating the concept of distance by gliding down like that.

John hesitated.

On one hand: Jessica would NOT approve bringing zombies to other worlds. At all. Didn't even need to ask about that one.

Also: He couldn't even Scan these dudes too hard without popping the, forget actually placing them in his Pocket without lethal results.

Also also: Cute or not, the little guy probably wanted to eat his brains. Or something similar, since his new body was more the Essence of a person and not an actual body, so there were no organs or brains for the short dude to nom on in the first place.

Another full sized zombie and menacing green creeper zoomed by (And THROUGH) the floating little zombie chicken jockey on their rapid trip towards death as John considered the situation.

And yeah, that was another issue he should remember: The baby zombie was inside that glass death tube. Opening it up to get him out would also let a LOT of other things potentially escape. Probably not though? Right? Since most things would die from impacting the hopper below?

Unless they ALSO spawned with armor.

Shit, there was probably an additional kill trap below to get rid of stragglers like that, wasn't there? Or else the viewing tube of death would have been filled up with armored monsters and other baby zombie chicken jockeys LONG ago.

Which meant that he needed to get down NOW and find that mechanism and turn it off NOW before baby zombie chicken knight the first reached the kill zone.

With no hesitation, John searched the ground… There, a small 'infinite water source block' was set up for easy access during construction far below. The pool of water was only one block deep, but that should be good enough. .

The boy launched himself off the edge.

…

Wow, he had really built a TALL dirt tower, hadn't he?

…

Like, way taller than you would think considering how fast he was able to…

SPLASH!

There we go!

John's two block tall body easily hopped out of the waist deep water without issue, having told logic and gravity to fuck off because a baby zombie was in danger.

Well, that and the Essence of water wanted to cause things to float and sort of threw the entire concept of 'momentum' and 'conservation of energy' out the window to ensure proper floatage.

Whatever, MOVE!

John dashed past the very surprised pigs nearby and reached out with his senses… There was still time!

"I'm coming baby zombie chicken knight the first! Hold on!"

[[Pocket!]]

A good chunk of complex equipment and pistons and stuff around the glass tube vanished into his Inventory as John verified there were no other risks to the still drifting down mounted baby zombie. It seemed safe, right? No hidden double piston extenders whatever?

"Cluck?" "Rawr."

SAVED! All praise the emergency chicken/baby zombie rescue protocols!

A clank marked another skeleton exploding into collectable drop items as it smashed through the tiny chicken riding zombie without issue or harm.

…Right, he was still trapped in a glass tube with monsters falling to death on top of him. Or her. If zombies had genders, since the pigs didn't.

Now… How to get baby zombie chicken knight the first out of the glass death tube safely without letting him eat anyone's brains, literally or figuratively?

"Oink?" "Cluck." "Oink." "Rawr." "Oink?"

Also: Need to ensure zombies don't enjoy the non-other white meat too. No risk to piggies could be allowed, no matter how cute they were with that tiny sword and that itty-bitty suit of armor.

Right, he could do this. John Doe was ON THE CASE!

~~~Pocket System~~~

Steve blinked at his base.

In confusion and some level of denial, he then looked to either side.

Maybe this wasn't his base?

Maybe one of his friends had joined his new instance without telling him?

Was this a prank?

...No, that was his mob farm. And over there was the cactus farm, the sugar cane farms, his wheat fields, the cowpens…

But still. "Where the hell did all these pigs come from?"