The Cosplay Cultivator

The problem was in portraying Deepcurrent given the costume didn't have much in the way of clothes that one would need to make. A speedo was all that was needed, it was the rest of the body that was the problem.

He was designed to be a fish-like creature, and as such had dark green skin all over. While Tang Ze could try to make gloves and shoes that would somewhat mimic his webbed hands and feet, the skin was another deal altogether.

Not to mention, it was hard for anything to hold up while underwater.

That necessitated the use of waterproof body paint, which was not easy to come by. Yin Tiang, when he got to know of this, had spent time trying to make his own - and they had finally come up with an alcohol and oil-based solution that somewhat worked.

The issue was that even this had its limitations, as even if you put it on your skin and the water didn't wash it off, the body would naturally sweat and that would cause it to slowly disintegrate. If he was back on Earth he probably would have been able to find a better solution, but here, this was the best that Yin Tiang could come up with.

And, despite its drawbacks, it should have been able to last for a few hours at least.

Tang Ze found that he couldn't use his power to make better costumes, unfortunately. He couldn't become a wizard and make one out of magic, its powers would not work, nor could becoming a shapeshifter and then turning into a picture-perfect representation of that character work. He had to make the costumes normally through his own effort.

Back on Earth, Tang Ze would not usually do things like this. He didn't like putting on body paint or applying huge amounts of makeup for his costumes, so this was a novel experience for him as he began dabbing his entire body in green bodypaint.

After that, were the designs that Deepcurrent had on his body. He had to get near the lake's surface so he could see himself properly - and this still took him nearly an hour to get it all reasonably right.

At least, he hoped it was right. One new problem he was running into was that he had no references to really draw upon, and he didn't remember all the fictional characters he'd seen that well. Did Deepcurrent have those black markings on the left or the right? Did he have three pairs of gills or two? Wasn't his face a different shade of green than the rest of his body?

There was some trial and error which could work by seeing how each change affected how close the costume was to the original, but it was extremely tedious to keep changing things and seeing what the difference was.

'I really need a makeup artist' - Tang Ze thought to himself, though he knew that was a pipe dream.

The 'gills' were just streaks of black paint, and no matter how hard Tang Ze tried, he could not find contacts in this world or an alchemical solution that might have the same effect, so while Deepcurrent had yellow irises, there was no known way for him to replicate that.

There were a few webbed accessories attached to his head, and overall, he was about thirty percent accurate to the character once he was done. And given just how overpowered Deepcurrent was while underwater, that should easily be more than enough.

"Remember though, the paint won't last forever," Yin Tiang said. "So before something like that happens, you need to surface up."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Tang Ze said. "Though, what about the mermen? They won't get mad that I'm in their territory, right?"

"They have a city under the lake, but they don't really rule the entire territory of the lake, you know," Yin Tiang said. "Try to avoid them, and see if you can spot anything worth taking."

"Alright,' Tang Ze said. As it was, they were mostly confident that even if they got the mermen somewhat riled up, Tang Ze could just run away and they'd teleport back to the sect before anything major could happen.

So there would be no harm done.

With a deep breath (even though this was unnecessary), Tang Ze dove into the water.

He hadn't been very good at swimming back home, but as a consequence of his new abilities, he found that being in the water was quite pleasant.

For one, although he had been feeling cold before, he now felt like it was quite warm. Not warm in an uncomfortable sense like on a hot day, but as if the water was just right.

Swimming in the lake felt so natural, like it was where he should've always been. What on Earth was he doing spending all that time on land for?

His 'gills' though they were nothing more than painted lines, seemed to work fine enough as he had no need to surface to breathe.

The most important thing though was the fact that his eyes were working much better than they otherwise would. It was like his vision was better than even a hawk's as he could see nearly every detail in the murky depths.

Tang Ze clicked his tongue, letting out a number of sound waves, which went out before bouncing back towards him, making a mental picture in his head.

The best part of all of this though, was the mobility. It was almost like flying - he just had to think of where he wanted to go and within the blink of an eye, he would be there, not feeling the slightest bit of fatigue at all.

He tried testing his powers to read the minds of fish, though he didn't find anything very interesting. Turns out that fish did't have very complicated thoughts.

In the distance, down below, he could make out some lights and structures which he guessed belonged to the mermen city. A bit of him was curious as to what it was like and wanted to give them a visit, though as far as he understood, they were fiercely independent and did not like outsiders. Going close might end up getting him a trident to the rear, so Tang Ze made a mental note to stay as far away from it as possible.

Although Tang Ze could move much faster than he could've otherwise imagined - to the point where the mere friction would've skinned him alive normally, he could not bring out his full speed. The reason was that his costume itself had no special powers, and was vulnerable to the elements. He had already lost a flipper in the short amount of time he had been down here, and if he moved any faster, he would also end up losing things like the prosthesis he was wearing to simulate fins.

And if his costume was damaged too much, it would lead to him losing too much of his powers. And then he would end up taking more damage to his costume. He might end up sinking like a stone, or asphyxiating if he lost his ability to breathe underwater.

He had to admit one thing - the lake was huge! It was closer to being a pocket of the sea rather than just a lake, although he could somehow tell that it was filled with freshwater. Even with his abnormal speed, it would take him ten minutes to lap the lake.

Not to mention it was extremely deep, if he wanted to, he could dive to the point that no light filtered from above, or even from the mermen settlement.

Still, his eyes seemed to work perfectly even in this kind of environment, and he had his sonar to guide him as well.

With a few clicks, he noticed a huge number of creatures moving towards him - squid!

Each of them was about the size of a car back on Earth, and they were all a bright shade of scarlet. What was remarkable was just how many there were; soon, hundreds if not thousands of them were passing him by, to the point where he was surrounded by a cloud of squid.

Tang Ze sent out telepathic waves towards them, and while they could tell that he didn't belong down there, they didn't strike him down or otherwise try to do anything to harm him. Right, Deepcurrent also had the ability to make friends with any fish he encountered - though Tang Ze wasn't sure how far that ability would go.

Could he make friends with the mermen like that?

Squid would normally not live in fresh water like this, so the squad that Tang Ze had encountered was likely some species unique to this world.

As he went deeper, still finding nothing interesting, he suddenly froze.

He wasn't sure what it was that he had just detected, initially thinking he had found some kind of underwater mountain. However, his sonar was telling him that it had just moved.

This thing, which felt like a behemoth to his sonar, had actually moved ever so slightly.

His eyes could barely make out the outline of a shadow at this distance, but his sonar was able to give him a much better picture.

That was not a huge rock - it was a massive… fish? Squid? He couldn't really tell.

Immediately, Tang Ze backtracked as his brain struggled to comprehend just how massive this thing was.

He could not even make out what the exact shape was of whatever it was he was looking at, even with his sonar. It was something so big he had initially mistaken part of it for the lake floor, though that movement (even if it was just a slight shift from its point of view, it felt like a monumental shift to him) signaled it was something else. What he thought was a massive valley within the floor of the lake was the gentle dip towards what Tang Ze guessed was an eye.

He had heard that 'there's always a bigger fish' - but this was ridiculous. He didn't even know if what he was looking at was a giant merman, crab, or cephalopod, because he couldn't capture the whole thing with his sonar in one go, and as such the image generated in his mind was quite broken and disjointed, as if he was looking at a scattered jigsaw puzzle of an image.

In a flood of panic, he sent out his mind towards the... thing for lack of a better term. It was thankfully asleep, or maybe hibernating, as its mind was very slow. He didn't dare do anything that might even have a remote chance of waking it up. Even its mind made his own look like a flea before an elephant, whatever it was, it gave the mental energy of something that was unfathomably ancient, that had existed since long before the Raswatian Empire was even a dream.

Likely no human had ever gone this deep before, or else he'd have seen records of it somewhere. Either that, or whoever went down so deep never came back up.

Both of those thoughts terrified him.

Even with his otherworldly strength underwater, which was combined with the passive strength he had gained from another costume and then boosted by ten percent kudos to his cultivation, he did not feel at all confident in taking whatever was down there in a fight.

It looked like something that, were it to be awakened, could possibly endanger the whole empire. Seeing it no longer made the water seem like a fun and safe place to be, but a prison that he felt he needed to get out of as soon as he could.