October 2024 found me on Cyrene, working steadily through Test of Faith while on holiday with my mother. Apparently my idea of a break included a mission asking for 20,000 kills. The scenery changed; my enthusiasm for another creature did not.
At the time I sometimes used the Veterans bank at Fort Argus, borrowing 200 PED when I needed to keep a session going. The Arret global arrived just after I had repaid one of those loans. That is how I remember the timing; the screenshot preserves the more photogenic part of the story.
EntropiaLife dates the 242 PED Young Arret to 23 October. Test of Faith stands at 17,361 of 20,000 kills, with the Arret Challenge at rank 21. I was well into the task, but Cyrene still had a respectable number of small appointments left on my calendar.
A short Halloween visit
Eight days later I could not let Halloween pass without hunting a few Zombies. I had roughly 40 PED of ammunition and resources from the previous day's mining listed at auction. I entered Mayhem Annihilation 04, planning a little participation rather than a historic evening.
After a few rounds of converting shrapnel into ammunition, an Annihilation Zombie changed the mood considerably: 8,993 PED in the rounded account history, and 8,993.86 PED of shrapnel in the screenshot. My largest hunting Hall of Fame result had chosen a graveyard for its entrance. Very seasonal of it.
The image shows the EWE LC-150 Tactical, CDF Edition (L), golden light, headstones and Halloween Creature Challenge rank 7. What it cannot preserve is the moment of looking again to make sure I had read the number correctly.
Beyond the graveyard
Mission Galactica was already running alongside my other activities. That unexpected result let me finish Stage 6; I remember obtaining the regeneration and divine chips through that progress. The full mission sequence is not in these photographs, but its place in my story is clear.
The Arret and the Zombie belong together because they show the rhythm of that month: steady mission work, a brief detour and an extraordinary surprise. Neither was a formula for the next session. Both gave me reasons to keep developing my avatar, and Halloween earned a particularly memorable page in the album.