On the Black Prison Battlefield, the banshee Fukatsu Ryoko disguised herself as the purple-haired witch from the Teaching Assistant Group, swindling Zheng Qing and Jiang Yu out of their rune guns and removing the young wizards' greatest threat against her.
When the rune guns vanished amid a blaze of brilliant light, Zheng Qing had briefly thought Fukatsu Ryoko had crushed them all.
It was not until after yesterday evening's class meeting, when Professor Yao privately stopped the young publicly funded student and returned this Remington to him, that Zheng Qing learned this gun had survived.
"...This gun was a trophy Fukatsu Ryoko voluntarily turned over."
After briefly explaining where the gun had come from, Professor Yao bit down on his pipe. His face was submerged in hazy smoke, and both his features and voice seemed somewhat blurred. "Perhaps the special markings on the gun were why it survived that terrible battlefield. But it was also those markings that prevented the school's security inspection laboratories from determining whether it was truly safe... In the end, it was handed up to us old fellows for judgment."
Zheng Qing knew what "special markings" Old Yao was referring to.
This Remington had originally been an utterly ordinary rune gun, a gift Su Shijun had given Zheng Qing to celebrate his first-place finish in the Freshman Competition during the School Hunting Meet—perhaps that was why it had ultimately survived. After all, having received an Archwizard's blessing, it was bound to differ somewhat from other rune guns.
Of course, Su Shijun's mark was not the only one branded onto this Remington.
Before Black Prison, in the Illusory Dream Realm, Hastur in the yellow robe had branded several yellow pinwheel-shaped symbols onto this gun. Earlier still, at Linzhong Lakefront, after Zheng Qing had nearly blown Sephrano apart,