Deep Sea Demons

***Heavy spoilers, read with caution.***
**Deep Sea Demons** (also called the **Sky-sea Realm**) are one of the participants in the Battle of Divine Will.

## Zero's perspective

Their existence was first hinted through Zero's experience while touching Humanity's Legacy Shard, which can be seen below:

*The second painting was much more mysterious.*

*It had few contents, which seemed to keep moving. At least in Zero's limited number of observations, she had never seen the same scene twice. This time, she saw water. The light blue water rippled backward against three large skeletons, which were completely hollow inside, but the water was somehow held outside the bones by an invisible barrier. It was as if the giant skeletons were keels supporting the side ports, and she felt like she was in a boat and looking out through the window— except these windows spanned the entire wall.*

*Zero was quickly enthralled by the strange scenery in front of her... She was standing at the border between water and sky, with half of her underwater, and the other half floating above. She could see the bright sunlight and sparse clouds above her, but her legs were encased in water. Under the sun, she could clearly see the color of the water changing from light blue on the surface to bright green, and then dark green, as it went deeper and deeper. Suddenly, the scene began to shake, and Zero felt the world tremble below her and almost fell over. She subconsciously tried to open her eyes but stopped herself at the last second. "This isn't reality," she told herself. "This is God giving you a sign."*

*The water was quickly rising and almost drowned out the sky. Or, perhaps the water was not rising, but she was sinking downwards. Soon, everything outside the window was covered by water, and she even saw red fish swimming by the skeletons. First, there were only a few of them, but then there were more and more, and the dense schools of fish surrounded the invisible barrier like a red ribbon. The water gradually changed from dark green to a dull black, until the scene was shrouded in a complete darkness and totally disappeared.*

*Zero broke out of the painting, panting. This was the first time she experienced such a clear vision, and when the darkness covered her eyesight, she felt like she was about to choke. However, she did not find any useful clues—according to the secret history, the contents of the second painting were always changing. Some recorded seeing a giant eyeball, others saw a volcano spewing bubbles and yellow smoke, and others saw a bottomless abyss giving off a faint light. No observers had ever seen the same thing.*

## Background

They can be found in Divine Land's 4 picture scrolls, their representative seems to be The Giant Eye. Their location seems to be in the sea, most likely on the Ocean that touches the other side of the continent where the Demons are situated. Their domain is called Sky-sea Realm by the Demons, and later the Humans, but is known as Zenith Sea by its members.  The Zenith Sea was probably named as Sky-sea Realm by the Demons due to the weird phenomenon that occurs in some parts of it in which matter is propelled through the air due to random ocean currents or can stay on the air (over a kilometer high) without support.

They were referred to as "Unknown civilization" before Roland's united forces of First Army, Witch Union and Taquila Witches, encountered with them in the undergrounds of the Great Snow Mountain. Through this expedition, it became clear that the Sky-sea Realm civilization had been experimenting on both Demons and Humans. However, it was unclear whether their aim was to find the other civilization's weaknesses or to find ways to integrate the other civilization's advantages into their biology.

In this same exploration , a monster that had thousands of eyes (similar to Eye Demons, called Devour ) but with a wider scope was found. After its defeat, it separated itself and fell into water after being engulfed by a big skeleton. However, it survived by using a multi-eyed insect's self-healing capabilities that it had absorbed. He appears to be the only sentient being of the race capable of thought and individualistic tendencies.

As hinted many times throughout the novel, the Deep Sea Demons seem to be able to control Demonic Beasts to the extent of being able to send them to their death,  and also alter their physiology in many ways, so much so that they can start to understand how to use magic power (like the Invisible Scyther-like demonic beast ) and how to think intelligently  (like the first Demonic Hybrid mentioned by Iron Axe ). This is later confirmed when the demons explain that the Demonic Beasts are beings that occupy a similar position to the Inferior Demons but for the Deep Sea Demons.

From the Demon's perspective, the **Sky-sea Realm** inhabitants were even more highly-evolved. From their land-engulfing ships to their most basic soldier, every one of them possessed remarkable magical power, as if they were designed just for war. Even several of the demonic beasts that they corrupted and controlled eventually grew into ones containing magical ability. Undeniably, the Sky-sea Realm was the strongest among the four races.

Their numbers seem to be countless and so they use this to their advantage when attacking, as soon as they identify a threat they all rush to it, swarming over from every direction and disregarding the corpses of their own kind laying on their feet. When they swirm over, the sea will turn into a rich blackness and after some time battling the terrain will be dyed blue and black from the puddles of blood that flowed.

## Creation and Propagation

Originally meant to be a supplement to the selection of life, it was created by The Custodian to be used as a control for the groups undergoing natural evolution. At the same time, it was supposed to increase external pressure on the species. Due to the primitive stage of the other groups, initially it didn't need to do much. However, as the others started to evolve with the use of magic, the Deep Sea Demons started to be modified to resist them, but as a result it relied more and more in evolution through excellent genes and biological techniques and less and less in the control of Magic power.

Though they are led by The Custodian, he acts through beings called **Mother of the Nest (Nest Mother)**, that behave akin to a Queen's bee to which their respective group obey without question, has a connection so inextricable that it could always sense their species, no matter how far the distance between them. Apparently, it commands several Eye of Branch Nests to go after other species (battling and annexing them) in order to evolve themselves and eventually pass their evolutionary constructs (information about the steps taken to evolve, also called pheromones) to the **Mother of the Nest,** so that it could have the best evolution instructions.This transmission of pheromones can be done through the water waves (probably through sound or magic transmission), or through anexation. Since Devour seems to fear being back to its leader, it seems that when they are annexed by the **Mother of the Nest**, they apparently die.

With their evolution, they begin to spread to the land at every Months of Demons when magic power becomes abundant, the 'Nest', a type of Sky-sea Realm creature, unleashes a large amount of spores that scatter through the ocean and wind, infecting ordinary wild beasts and transforming them into various grotesque monsters that undergo mutation and bloodfests. Their reason for being is to collect desirable traits (pheromones, as described by Devour) and eventually be consumed by **The Mother of the Nest**, and so they are seen as 'harvest fields' by the Deep Sea Demons.

According to Serakkas, the various Nest Mothers have existed since the begining of time (very high life expectancy) and rarely change, but have the ability to control many subordinates to fight for them. Unlike other races which evolve individually, the Deep Sea Demons seem to evolve its entire race at once, without any independent entity. After hearing about it, Roland poses that the Sky-sea Realm's evolution is linked to "God" and points out that they seem to have never communicated with any race, unlike all other races which have at least at some point interacted with each other through language.

After some reasearch done on Nest Mothers and their demonic beasts, Agatha concluded that in order for the beasts to grow stronger the Nest Mothers were sacrificing themselves by moving their own magic power onto the beasts.With this, she postulates that the race's evolution on land is deviating from the one done on the ocean, so much so that they might be sacrificng the future of the species.

Their eventual demise came after Roland informed the Custodian that they would jeopardize the Cradle system by preventing other competitors in the Battle of Divine Will who might be more adapted to the magic outside The Cradle to continue evolving, eventually becoming extinct. After passing the mantle to Roland, the Nests Mothers and the blade beasts got hit by an intense magic power surge coming from the hole in the Bottomless Land which seemed to take away their souls. From all of the Deep Sea Demons, only the sea ghosts remained sentient and soon receded into the water like the tide, without any will to keep fighting.

## Known Species

* Sea Ghost: Very common water based being with fish-like appearance.
* Huge Sea Monster: Mixture between a shark and an octopus.
* Mutated Bug: Bug species with special ability.
* Eye of Nest: The Eyes of Nests they are task to gather information for the nest mothers to help in the deep sea demons evoluson.
* Leviathans:
* Boat-Shaped Monster: Large as the three-masted ship she had seen, its lower part a combination of a fish and a squid.
* Mountain Devourer: Behemoth with dense armor and large mouth.
* Nest Mother:

## Trivia

* They were originally named **'Sea Monsters'** by Roland, but since the name was terrible, it was changed to **Deep Sea Demons**, by Scroll, but after capturing Kabradhabi, they were mostly referred as the **Sky-sea Realm**, the name given by Demons.

## References

1. ↑ Chapter 484 (novel)
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Chapter 845
3. ↑ Chapter 1136 (novel)
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Chapter 808-816
5. ↑ Chapter 1366 (novel)
6. ↑ Chapter 808, 810
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Chapter 814
8. ↑ Chapter 784, 808-809
9. ↑ Chapter 8, 67
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Chapter 1418
11. ↑ Chapter 1309 (novel)
12. ↑ Chapter 1480 & 1483
13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Chapter 1492 (novel)
14. ↑ Chapter 1427 (novel)
15. ↑ Chapter 1452 (novel)
16. ↑ Chapter 816 (novel)