The Dump of Digital Witches and Johannes Trithemius' "Magic" Book Steganographia

When I pressed the blank part of the square bracket in the guard comic balloon, a cursor appeared. I thought, “It seems like this is an interactive image that allows us to fill in the blanks. Possible answers to the riddle can be written here, and the answer must be correct before the time the witch girl mentioned—before the witching hour ends.”

Since I am a history graduate, I know what the witching hour means. The term has appeared in ancient stories and folklore. The witching hour, also known as the devil’s hour, is the time when witches, ghosts, demons, and other supernatural beings increase in power and are at their strongest.

How long does the witching hour last? Definitions vary; several times can be considered the witching hour. Some say it is between sunset and sunrise, which would have been obvious in the olden days when the Quietus Cloud did not exist. Others say the witching hour ends after midnight or around 1:00 AM. Some say the time ends at 4:00 in the morning.

To be on the safe side, I figured I had to finish the puzzle before midnight. I glanced at the clock on my gadget, which showed that it was still not even 11:30 p.m. I thought, “There are still about 35 minutes left. I’m sure I can solve this riddle.”

I read Mr. Warm’s email again and focused on the sentence the witch girl said. “Watchman, please help me hunt some bits in this dump; crack it before the witching hour ends.”

I thought that the ‘bits’ the witch girl said could have many meanings. Then I focused on the last sentence before the manga-style illustration. “This time, a comic panel is worth more than thousands of words and thousands of pixels.”

I muttered, “Bits and pixels. It seems that the bits the witch girl said refer to binary digits in a computer.” Are there hidden bits in this manga panel?

Then I looked closely at the big picture. A witch in a dump. Witches in Deutschtonia are called Hexe. Hexe is in a dump. In some dialects of our language, Hexe is also called Hex. Hex in a dump. Of course, my brain quickly remembered a word, “Hex dump!”

In computer science, a hex dump is a textual hexadecimal representation of a file or data stored in a computer’s memory or storage device. Hex dump data is often binary data—although it doesn’t always have to be binary data. Examining a hex dump has many purposes, including digital forensics, reverse engineering, and debugging.

My mind was thinking about the hex dump as my hand clicked on the download button for a panel illustration of a magical girl and a guardian manga. The illustration seemed to have a much larger file size than the usual image files.

“There’s no doubt there are hidden messages in this picture,” I said as I put my roll-up gadget on the hotel table. I walked as fast as I could to my bag, and from there I immediately took my headless laptop. Then I sat back on the bed, attaching the roll-up gadget to the headless laptop.

With the installation of the two devices, on the roll-up gadget screen, I could select software programs that were previously unavailable. These computer programs were available after the connection to the headless laptop provided the appropriate hardware specifications to run various large applications. I immediately ran one of the heavy software programs available.

The application I run is called ANNESRITHM. The computer program is my work, together with several colleagues of the Five. We took the name ANNESRITHM from the name of one of the scholars in the previous era of our country named Johannes Trithemius.

His name, Trithemius, is an epithet of the name of his hometown, called Trittenheim. The city itself still stands today in the eastern part of the Federal Republic of Deutschtonia. His name when he was born was Johann Heidenberg, which was taken from his father, Johann von Heidenberg. When he was little, his father had died, and his mother, named Elisabeth, married another man.

Trithemius' stepfather did not care about Johannes' education; that's why he could only study in secret. Despite this situation, in the end, his intelligence and hard work made him an educated person later on. As an adult, Trithemius was a historian, lexicographer, cryptographer, and occultist—keep in mind he lived in ancient times, so it's not surprising that he was also an occultist.

Johannes Trithemius, along with the famous Aithalia scientist Leon Battista Alberti, is often called the father of modern cryptography. One of Trithemius' works—and his most famous work—is entitled Steganographia. With this work, the term "steganographia" first appeared.

Trithemius' Steganographia consists of three volumes. It seems that the books discuss magic—especially regarding the use of spirits to communicate over long distances. That is why this work was included in the list of books that were considered forbidden for hundreds of years. However, after the decryption key for the first two volumes was published, it was actually discovered that the works contained discussions about cryptography and steganography.

The term steganography comes from the Greek word "steganographia"—and Greece was the birthplace of top thinkers in ancient times. The term comes from two words, namely (1) steganós (στεγανός), which means "covered or hidden," and (2) graphia (γραφή), which means "writing."

Steganography can be defined as the practical art and science of writing hidden messages or information in such a way, such as with another message or physical object, that the existence of the hidden message or information will not be known by people in general.

Although the term steganography first appeared through the work of Trithemius, the practice had existed long before. The application of steganography had existed for around 1400 years before Trithemius was born.

That practice was recorded in the book "Histories" by the famous Greek historian Herodotus. In that book, there are two examples of application, namely: (1) writing hidden on wax tablets and (2) cutting a servant's hair, "writing" a message on the servant's head, and telling the servant to leave after his hair grew back.

Now, in the modern era at this time, I do steganography with the help of a computer. I input the comic panel illustration that I have downloaded into the ANNESRITHM program. While waiting, my eyes kept moving to stare at the progress of the ANNESRITHM code cracking and the clock. I hoped, "Hopefully it will be finished before midnight!"

My hope can finally come true. ANNESRITHM was able to reveal a secret message from the illustration of the witch and the guard. I read the message carefully.

If you can read this message, congratulations, you did not mistranslate my message. Before the witching hour ended, you had uncovered the illustration of the witch and the guard at the dump.

I know I will die on 1.1. But let my death date continue my legacy. a 1.1 can be used to concoct the volume and area between the Witch Curve and "its tangent at a point at infinity." The larger portion will be “scope for freedom of thought or action.” Write the results of both potions on the guard’s comic balloon.