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HELHEIM SCANS
[Translator – Seraph]
[Proofreader – Draxx]
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Chapter 35
Jack the Ripper.
The Phantom of Death.
We will never truly know who she was, nor will we ever.
For hundreds of years to come, people will speculate and wonder who she is..
This was how The Phantom of Death, a documentary on Jack the Ripper, summed up the case in a single sentence.
Jack the Ripper.
A suspect forever beyond capture.
A ghost that surfaced in 19th-century London, leaving behind nothing but unsolved mysteries before vanishing into history.
Even Arthur Conan Doyle, the father of Sherlock Holmes, and Joseph Bell, the real-life inspiration for Holmes, failed to unmask her.
At one point, rumors spread that DNA analysis had finally uncovered her identity.
But in the end, it was an unrecognized claim at best.
The DNA presented as evidence was unreliable, degraded by the passage of time.
The data was too flawed, too inconclusive.
And so, Jack the Ripper’s true identity remained shrouded in shadow.
Yet that very Phantom of Death… had now stepped out of the darkness and appeared before me.
"This bread is amazing!"
Wearing a radiant smile.
Above those gracefully curved golden eyes, a single message appeared.
==
[Complete Jack the Ripper’s Executions.]
Reward: Phantom’s Knife
==
***
19th-century London was a city of two lives.
The lavish townhouses of the wealthy.
And the slums that stretched beneath their terraces, filled with those who had nothing.
—The East End.
A dark stain on London, where the lower class was pushed into a single, confined space.
Where poverty led to a booming sex trade and a flood of orphans.
That was the East End, a wretched slum.
In that place, Vanessa lived as a seamstress, taking care of those orphans.
She patched up their tattered clothes, sewing each thread by hand, ensuring the children had something warm to wear.
"Vanessa! More bread!"
"Oh no, we’re all out!"
"Aww…"
"The sisters will bring some more this weekend."
"That stuff tastes bad!"
"Then go buy your own."
She was their big sister, their caretaker.
"Thanks for sharing the bread. The kids love it."
"Oh, it’s nothing."
"I’ll be sure to repay you someday."
Her golden eyes curved into a gentle smile.
Humming a tune, she resumed her knitting, fingers moving effortlessly.
"……"
Watching her like this, it was impossible to believe that this bright, optimistic woman could bear such a dreadful name.
And that made it all the more impossible to understand.
==
[Complete Jack the Ripper’s Executions.]
Reward: Phantom’s Knife
==
‘Why was my status window giving me this quest?’
Jack the Ripper killed prostitutes.
All of her known victims were prostitutes.
The commonly accepted number was five, but some argued there had been more.
Countless women had died in the East End.
‘The Whitechapel Serial Murders.’
Modern theories suggested that the entire series of killings might have been Jack the Ripper’s work.
Of course, the truth remained unknown.
Jack the Ripper was a phantom, wrapped in mystery.
But the Vanessa I saw before me…
She didn’t seem like the kind of person who would kill without reason.
Nothing about her resembled a thrill-seeking murderer.
If she had truly been one, then surely the victim count would have been much higher.
Jack the Ripper.
For her, there must have been a reason to kill.
And perhaps that reason… was the same reason why the status window had issued this quest.
I silently watched the red-haired woman as she happily continued her knitting.
***
Life in the slums was harsh.
Orphans who couldn’t find work had only two choices to survive.
Dig through trash bins for food or become pickpockets.
"Filthy little rats!"
"You're making the streets disgusting! Get lost!"
To London’s gentlemen, the children of the East End were nothing but pests.
It was common for them to kick any they saw without reason.
"Oh, Allen… You got hurt again. Didn’t I tell you to stay out of the West End? Let me see your arm."
Vanessa quietly tended to the injured children.
Of course, treatment only meant washing the wound and wrapping it with leftover fabric from her sewing.
In the East End, medicine was a luxury beyond reach.
"Let me handle it."
Jeanne, watching Vanessa work, stepped in.
A warm light spread from her hands, sealing the child’s wounds.
Vanessa’s golden eyes widened.
"...Is that magic of light? Amazing."
Her gaze was captivated by the divine glow.
Once the healing was complete, she turned to Jeanne and asked.
"Could I learn to do that too?"
"Unfortunately, Vanessa, you don’t have an affinity for light magic."
"Oh… That’s disappointing."
Vanessa genuinely looked disheartened.
When I asked why she wanted to learn, her response was unexpected.
"Well… I wanted to become a nun."
"A nun?"
"Yes! The nuns come every Sunday to give out bread. I wanted to be like them… But I guess I’m not meant for it."
Vanessa smiled brightly, as if it didn’t matter.
But I could tell she meant it.
Her dream was to be a nun who handed out bread.
***
For the next few days, I stayed by Vanessa's side, carefully watching her.
I needed to understand how this woman became Jack the Ripper?
And in doing so, I learned more about the darker side of the East End.
One thing stood out about the prostitutes there.
Each of them bore a red petal-shaped marking on some part of their body.
"What is that?"
"You’ve never seen ‘White Blossoms’ before?"
"White Blossoms?"
"It’s a mark that shows they’ve been infected with ‘Plum Blossom Poison’. Prostitutes seek out infection because it stops them from feeling hunger or thirst."
"……."
I was at a loss for words.
Plum Blossom Poison.
It was the method by which Astaroth, one of Solomon’s 72 demons, expanded his dominion.
Known as the ‘Patron Saint of Whores’, Astaroth infected prostitutes, spreading his influence through their bodies.
Victims no longer felt hunger or thirst.
But in time, they would mutate into aberrations.
It was a curse that needed to be purified immediately upon discovery.
And yet… according to Vanessa, the prostitutes welcomed their infection as a form of salvation.
The East End’s gangs controlled these women, regulating the Poison’s spread like a business.
They sold it.
"It’s tragic, really. They don’t know that infection turns them into monsters."
"They don’t know?"
"No. No matter how many times I tell them, they think I’m just jealous."
"How do you know the truth, Vanessa?"
"Because the woman who gave birth to me was infected and turned into one of them."
The government had put her down immediately.
Vanessa spoke without emotion, as if she were merely stating a fact.
"It’d be better to die as a human, wouldn’t it?"
"If these things exist, why is everyone so quiet?"
"Well… it’s the East End."
"……."
I had always heard that the East End was London’s darkest slum, a place where the poor were abandoned.
But this was far beyond anything I had imagined.
The British government knew Plum Blossom Poison was spreading and they chose to ignore it.
When prostitutes turned into aberrations, the government quietly eliminated them.
No news reports. No public outrage.
The poor of the East End were people whose disappearances did not matter.
There was no need to provide welfare when Plum Blossom Poison regulated the population on its own.
And so, the British government allowed this monstrous phenomenon to continue.
==
[Complete Jack the Ripper’s Executions.]
==
Only now did I begin to understand what this quest truly meant.
And why a killer named Jack the Ripper had appeared in London.
Jack the Ripper.
The Phantom of Death.
A monster born from the name of ‘Neglect’.
***
"Allen wants to become a soldier. Raphael is going to open a bakery, Ciel wants to be a jeweler, and Yuri...."
Vanessa beamed as she shared the children’s dreams. She looked genuinely happy.
But both she and I knew that those dreams would likely never come true.
Vanessa, more than anyone, must have known that this place was London’s trash heap.
Listening to her talk, I spoke carefully.
"Miss Vanessa."
"Yes?"
"Have you considered sending the children to an orphanage?"
“........”
Vanessa’s hands stopped scissoring the fabric, but only for a moment, and then the scissoring resumed.
"I would if I could… but the Church doesn’t accept children from the East End."
"I’ll help you."
I turned to Jeanne.
She had been standing quietly the whole time now, she gave a small nod.
***
With Jeanne’s assistance, I arranged for Vanessa’s children to be taken in by a Cathedral orphanage.
Orphanages required money to accept new children, but that wasn’t a problem.
"Oh! A katana?!"
The relics from my store were worth quite a fortune in 19th-century England.
And when Jeanne demonstrated her holy power, the London Church readily agreed to take in the orphans.
After all, within the Church, divine power was absolute authority.
"Sis! You’ll visit, right?"
"Of course, I will."
"Vanessa! You have to come!"
After saying her goodbyes, Vanessa smiled and turned to me.
"Thank you. I feel relieved now."
But even as she smiled, her gaze lingered on the church in the distance.
"Ah… I really wanted to become a nun."
"You already seem like one."
"That’s kind of you to say."
She grinned a warm, genuine smile.
"But I could never be a good woman like Jeanne."
"……."
After that day, Vanessa disappeared from the East End.
And three days later.
[EAST END CRIME FIRM ANNIHILATED!]
[Gang war suspected as the cause…]
[Peaky Blinders expanding into London?!]
[PR/N: Thomas Shelby in the house.]
The gangs that had been selling Plum Blossom Poison were wiped out.
London’s newspapers claimed it was a territorial dispute between gangs.
But I knew better.
—It’s tragic, really. They don’t know that infection turns them into monsters.
—It’d be better to die as a human, wouldn’t it?
Vanessa wanted the prostitutes to die as humans.
Rather than nameless monsters erased from existence.
==
[Complete Jack the Ripper’s Executions.]
==
"……"
I had to find Vanessa.
I had no means to track someone whose location was completely unknown.
Even if I searched all of England, finding Vanessa would be near impossible.
She had become the ghost of the East End.
So instead I sought out someone who could find ghosts.
***
Late at night.
A townhouse in West London.
The brown-bricked house bore a distinctive decoration.
Portraits of a man, his lips curled around a pipe, hung everywhere.
The house was completely dark, save for a single lit window on the second floor.
I unfurled my shadow cloak, scaling the walls unseen, before slipping into the lighted window.
Inside, a middle-aged gentleman sat at his desk, scribbling away by candlelight.
"Who’s there?"
The man’s fountain pen paused as the window creaked open.
—If Holmes were real, he would probably be me.
The man I had sought out the father of Sherlock Holmes.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The only man who could possibly uncover the truth behind this phantom.
——————
HELHEIM SCANS
[Translator – Seraph]
[Proofreader – Draxx]
Join our Discord for release updates!
https://discord.com/invite/dbdMDhzWa2
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