I woke up feeling refreshed and strangely hungerless.

“Am I feeding off the mana from the mana spring, or do I just not need food?” I mused, staring blankly at the ceiling for a moment before my attention was grabbed by the pixelated icon of a spray of light blue in top left of vision.

“Huh?” I focused my thoughts onto it. Buff: High Mana Density. Mana regeneration and growth of mana pool increased. “Hmm?” My mana pool increased to 200.1 past its previous max of 200! “Wow! That’s definitely new! I wonder how high it can go… questions for later.”

Pulling my laser drill out of my hotbar and pointing it at the wall, I sliced a large rectangle through it and pulled it into my inventory, then walked to the edge and looked out, taking in a deep breath and admiring the view.

“Mmm~, that's better. Needed some fresh air,” I said, stretching widely before stepping out. I dropped for about twenty meters before snapping my wings open and hovering.

“What the-?” My tower had changed a little overnight; the obsidian had previously had a slightly rough texture and was cloudy; now it was glossy smooth and clear, light sinking into its dark depths while also shining off the curved sides.

I only had to think briefly before I realised the cause. “The mana from the spring!” I exclaimed, “it's infused my tower!”

I knew from my God given knowledge that a mana pool of 200 was already very large, most people having between 20 and 30, so just one night sleeping in a tower above a mana spring causing a +0.1 increase was incredible!

“Awesome,” I said, doing a couple of laps round my tower for a morning exercise, landing back on the gap I had cut. I eyed the gap then cut three other identical large rectangles out of the tower walls, one opposite and two perpendicular, using the Architect Gizmo Pack to make them exactly identical, then filled them with a sheet of glass to create four windows. In between each two of them I put in more actuated doors, placing an obsidian platform outside each one for me to land and take off from.

Halfway through, I realised something I hadn't tested yet, so once I had finished, I pulled out my cell phone and activated the home function. A glowing mist surrounded me and a moment later I popped out of existence and reappeared next to my bed.

“So sleeping does reset the spawn location. That’s good.”

Humming gently to myself I placed the bed and lamp back into my inventory and tore up the floor. Still humming, I dropped down to the bottom of the tower, then grapple-hooked onto where the main door was; building out a floor using obsidian all the way across the space, cutting off the mana spring. On the opposite side to the door, I built a spiral staircase clockwise up round the inside wall of the tower, each step 20cm by 20cm and stretching 2m out from the wall, leaving the rest of the space in the middle of the tower empty. Every ten meters up I put in a short landing; a moment of inspiration and a quick check of my cell phone revealed it to have a calculator function, which I quickly used to decide that slightly under 99.6cm was the perfect size for each landing. It was very helpful that the Laser Drill made such precise cuts.

A short while and exactly 3-and-a-half laps of stairs round the tower later, I reached the 20th 'floor' where my windows were and put in a new floor of obsidian, which I then covered with a thin wooden one, leaving a central two-meter-wide circle of empty space in the exact centre. I descended back down the staircase, placing in floors as I went, always leaving the central two meters empty so that there was a clear shaft from top to bottom of my tower.

I reached the bottom then paused. I tore up the floor I had built over the mana spring and replaced it with a glass one, then I paused again, tapping my masked chin, deciding how I wanted to continue. Using Smooth Marble Blocks, I built three large steps each 1 meter apart out from the wall ten meters below the glass floor and continued them down until the marble reached the bedrock, then, covering the floor around the mana spring, I placed Hellstone, a material that held the unquenchable fires on the underworld and would burn those foolish enough to touch it… unless they had the relevant equipment. Which I did. Unquenchable fires would be perfect for heating water.

Curiously, I activated my depth vision, and looked at the mana spring itself, but the condensed mana was filtering through the solid rock from much deeper underground than I could see, and I didn't want to risk tampering with it, so I left it as it was. If I found another one in the future, I may experiment to see what I could do with it.

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I flapped back up to the three steps and pulled out an Infinite Water Bucket and filled the entire area up to halfway up the second step with water. I then cut a small niche into the wall directly below the spiral staircase on the glass floor and on the opposite side on the top step, then placed teleporters in each one. I connected them with wires and added a pressure plate to each so that walking on to one teleporter would have you walk out the correct direction from the other. I tested them cautiously and they worked exactly as I had intended.

I looked a little regretfully at the bath/pool I had just created, before tearing myself away and zipping back to the top of the tower through the shaft. I reached 'my' floor, then flapped up a bit further. I built another eight floors six meters apart up to the top of the tower, not continuing the spiral staircase, making it so that only those who could fly could reach them through the central shaft.

Now my tower really needed some light sources, since relying on my light pet would likely not be possible for any visitors. Also having a giant eyeball floating over my shoulder would probably frighten people. Oh, some more windows would be good. I added some more in the straight 30meter upper section, but decided not to put in any in either the spire or the stem of the tower.

Anyway, back to light sources. This is a more difficult choice however. I didn't want something burning, as that would fill the tower with CO2 with no way for it to escape. “Hold that thought.” I grabbed my laser drill and cut tiny, curving pores through the obsidian walls of the tower so that while air could circulate through, nothing could enter or exit the tower through them, not even rain.

“I wonder how that works?” I mused, watching how the laser drill was able to cut away material on the other side of an obstacle.

Anyway, back to light sources. Again. “Hmm…” I eventually decided on Topaz Gemspark, a block made using glass and topaz gemstones that would emit a soft yellow light constantly. I replaced the lip round the central shaft in each floor with it to a distance of half a meter, as well as adding short sections embedded flush into the walls at chest height. I also placed a long continuous curve of it in the wall beside the spiral staircase so that a person could climb the staircase while trailing a hand along the glowing surface.

The Gemspark worked extremely well with the obsidian, merging seamlessly together; it was like some sections of the obsidian had decided to give out the sunlight the rest drank in.

Pleased, I walked up the staircase back to my floor. It was as barren as all the others, there wasn't even a bed. Displeased I rifled through my world storage. A few moments later, the room was populated with a large double bed, a desk, a bookcase, several weapon racks and mannequins, a potted plant (named Audrey), a table and several chairs, and a dresser. In a little walled off section in the corner, a toilet which magically deleted anything placed in it, and a sink which produced its own water seemingly from nowhere.

Curiously, I checked the bookcase, which had books on it. All the books were replicas of the books I had read while on Earth, which made me very happy.

I pulled a book off and wandered off in the direction of a chair, not noticing the hole in the floor. With a startled and undignified squawking noise I fell down it, bounced off the side of the floor below, and came to rest on the floor below that.

I growled in annoyance and spend a few minutes erecting a meter-tall wall around each of the holes on each of the floors, before heading all the way down the tower to retrieve my book. At the bottom, I noticed I hadn't put in any lights for the pool, so I nipped through the teleporter and placed some diamond Gemspark, which glowed white, around the walls and in rings down to the Hellstone. Combined with the soft blue glow of the mana spring diffusing through the water, and the faint cloud of steam in the air, it gave the place a very inviting look, so I parked my book, stripped off (leaving my wings on), and dived in, swimming around a bit before paddling back to sit chest deep in warm water on the second step. I stretched comfortably on the stone, then inspected myself properly for the first time since arriving in this world.

While I certainly hadn’t been unfit, my new body definitely blew my previous self away. Compact muscle layered me, padded by enough skin and fat that I didn’t look like the Hulk, while still showing a significant amount of muscle definition. Though what really caught my attention were the tattoos. I quickly worked them out to be symbolised outlines of my equipment, which I tested by switching the Architect Gizmo Pack back to my usual accessory for that slot, the Charm of Myths, causing a tattoo of a red band with a stretched hexagon in its centre to appear round my left upper arm. It wasn’t just my accessories though; my armour was represented as a single stylised flame in the centre of my chest, my Drill Mount as two U-shaped mining laser emitters, one on each inner wrist, facing outwards, and the Suspicious Looking Tentacle, the source for my light pet, was on my right clavicle. I played around with moving them in and out of various parts of my body and watching the tattoos disappear and reappear in the same place regardless of where I brought them out from, then got bored.

I leaned back and sighed, relaxing. After a few moments, I realised that the hunger I had started to feel before I got into the water had faded away.

“Hmm, so I can survive without food,” I noted to myself. The knowledge the God had given me didn't seem to include anything about food, which was slightly weird; it was strangely lacking on simple things and overly detailed on others, like the mana spring or the 10000 uses of slime gel. Gel seemed very versatile, which was good, because I had a ridiculous amount of it, being one of those gamers who stockpiled everything.

I was ready for pretty much anything this world could throw at me.

That thought made me smirk slightly; it would definitely bring trouble down on my head.