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* Artificial soul: Artificial souls are a type of soul mass-produced by the shinigami.Issued in pill form, they are used to force shinigami out of their gigai during protracted stays in the living world, and also to evict pluses that refuse to leave their bodies after death. They come with a pre-programmed personality that animates the host body until the owner returns. In addition to the mundane versions, a series of experimental souls authorized and created by shinigami researchers exists. Known as modified souls, these were meant to hunt hollows by possessing soulless human bodies and supercharging a particular aspect of them (for example, strength or speed). The shinigami decided to scrap the project due to the inhumanity of forcing dead bodies to fight, and ordered the destruction of all modified souls. Only one modified soul exists in the manga, but there are three more such characters in the anime.
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* Quincy: The Quincy are a clan of spiritually aware humans who once fought against the hollows, using weapons composed of spiritual energy to slay them. As opposed to shinigami, Quincy absorb and channel energy from their surroundings to fight. Unlike the shinigami method of killing hollows which allows the hollow to enter Soul Society, the Quincy technique simply destroys the hollow's soul entirely. This method has the propensity to shatter the balance of the universe, because when souls are destroyed, the number of souls entering and leaving Soul Society cannot remain equal. This issue prompted the shinigami to conduct a campaign to exterminate the Quincy about 200 years before the main storyline. At least two Quincy still remain.
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* Bount: Exclusive to the anime, the Bounts are a clan of human beings with high spiritual energy and special powers. They were accidentally created by shinigami scientists looking for a way to create eternal life. Bounts consume the souls of human beings to survive; theoretically, a Bount could live forever by doing so. Although the Bounts have a strict rule to consume only the souls of the dead, the final group of Bounts chose to drain souls from living humans in order to become more powerful. Each Bount uses a "doll" in combat, a type of familiar possessing its own special abilities. Every doll is unique and is a manifestation of the user's power. If the doll is destroyed, its owner is destroyed as