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The Plus did not, like so many others that had fallen victim to the Hollow, understand that she was looking at her doom. A light bobbed in the distance, bright and ephemeral, it was just so fascinating and she couldn't take her eyes off of the spectacle. She did not even notice that she was being joined by other spirits, minor Hollows, other pluses, and even the odd human here and there who was sensitive to the spirit world.
Not one of them felt any fear, or had any inkling of the horrible fate that awaited them. Tengoku smiled gruesomely, feeling ecstasy at the thought of how these souls would soon be filled with despair, torment came in so many different flavors. It was incredible how he could get more spirit power out of a soul if he kept it caged and tormented, inside his lantern was a little hell he'd cooked up.
Tengoku didn't feel bad about what he did to the souls, to him it was just a method of cultivating his meals, like the icing on the cake, or the seasoning in your steak. It just made things taste better, and helped him manage his endless hunger, other hollows were driven to hunting without end and were killed by the Shinigami due to that hunger, but by keeping his souls locked up and drinking of them only when he needed to, he could manage his dietary needs, and fill the emptiness inside of him.
Which he rarely felt anymore, he had found that this hole inside of him was not much of an adversity if one found something to passionately focus on, like his collecting and sampling. Though lately he was feeling restless, unsatisfied, he wanted more and what he was doing now was almost routine, it wasn't as...filling.
He needed something more, something with more...meat, to it, admittedly Tengoku hadn't really set his sights on any catches that were really dangerous, but perhaps not it was time to do so. Tengoku had a very large collection of souls, perhaps now it was time to drink deeply of that reservoir, make his power grow.
Yes...perhaps after all this time, it was time to set his sights on reaching the pinnacle of Hollow power and work towards becoming a Vasto Lorde, where only the King of Hueco Muendo was more powerful then that, but he had no such lofty aspirations towards such a thing, becoming a Vasto Lorde would be more then enough to attain the power to go for whatever souls tickled his fancy.
So lost in his thoughts was he, he did not notice the dazed expressions of his prey turn to shock and fear as his lantern began to suck them into it's depths, an automatic Soul Sucker that affected any weaklings such as this once they were within range. Admittedly he had the strength to just do it over a wide area, but that sort of thing invariably drew the attention of Shinigami faster then a fat man goes for a Twinkie...a phenomenon Tengoku had observed a couple times, the fat man moved pretty damn fast, snatching the little cream-filled spongy cake up faster then you could blink.
It's current soul-collecting done, Tengoku paused and sent out a pulse, Pesquisa shooting out through Karakura town, it would automatically ping any potential threats...or opportunities and let him know where the best spot to continue his collecting, but he had to be wary and make sure his efforts weren't too obvious, stealth was of the utmost, Tengoku didn't doubt the Gotei 13 would send someone strong enough to destroy them if they had solid intelligence he was in the area.
The Shinigami...those that believed he wasn't a myth, despised him, for a simple reason. It was natural for Hollows to eat other souls, but to keep them caged? That was most decidedly a problem for the Death Gods, whose job was to regulate the flow of spirits, though Tengoku didn't see how it made a difference, once they were caught they might as well have been eaten. Though he supposed by keeping the spirits in his prison all nice and chained up, did sort of keep them in abeyance, a wicked limbo that ensured they would not be reincarnated until he did something with them.
Not his problem, and he really thought the Shinigami fussed too much, too caught up in their old ways of thinking, what he was doing might have been an issue a few centuries ago, but now in this present, where humans rode about in strange machines, and had all sorts of bizarre gadgets....there were millions of souls, it was a wonder the Gotei 13 managed to regulate anything.
The ping returned at last, and it detected several large spirit powers in the immediate area, Tengoku frowned and clucked his tongue in faint irritation, he was going to have to lay low until he had a better idea of what was going on, focusing on dropping his power levels as low as they could go, he carefully began to move through the town, no longer visible even to low level pluses and the like, disappearing like a wraith.
Perhaps...in light of his newly thought of goals, he could obtain some powerful souls to savor...
