Annoyance of this event...

Worst part of this event is having the permit expire a split second before your pet loots an artifact and resetting your count to 0 instantly. I completely gave up even trying it because I got tired of having all my progress erased by events outside my control.

It doesn't erase your progress. I was afraid of that too but if you stop collecting and get another permit before "stealing" 100 artifacts your count is safe.