Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like you're the one out of line for attacking him as a "merit whore", and while he should of just ignored you, how about just cool it both of you? This whole thing is stupid.
These idiotic attacks on his part began even earlier. Once upon a time I argued with one user, he decided to intervene in this dispute and insert his extremely important opinion. When I told him not to go where he was not asked, he decided to write me a false review, something like this:
Came to the forum solely for earnings. I bet that in a year we won't see him on the forum anymore, as he was kicked out of ChipMixer
Then he apparently realized what nonsense he wrote and he deleted this review. After that, a certain amount of time passed and he decided in my topic with congratulations to unleash some political nonsense about censorship in Russia, about turning off the Internet and other off topic. Read from post 66:
https://ninjastic.space/topic/5388963My comment on his posts:

Here is what he replied to me:
Tell you what! You sounds freaking arrogant. Fuck off, piece of shit! Feel free to report this comment or delete it you moron.
After that, he creates a separate topic with complaints, where he brazenly lies that he behaved politely, and his posts were unfairly deleted:
Mods are not around or things has changed in terms of report handling.
Not finding any support regarding his requests, he nevertheless decided to leave me a neutral review, where he called me a merit whore:
2022-03-19
Reference An absolute merit whore. His famous, "In this article I would like to touch upon such a theme"
Please double check before meriting him.
Then he immediately began to look in my posts for something that could be mentioned in the reputation: u
Announce your rank up, merit or any achievements that makes you feel great!. . Of course, the topic is self-moderated, because he wanted to take revenge on me and so that I would not comment on anything in a topic that also affects me. I wrote one post that he constantly deleted, I tried to write it again, but he constantly deleted my posts:

After that, he immediately decided to create another topic, where he tries to beg from the moderators to get me banned: D:
Self moderation question.
So, now let's trace the timeline of his personal vendetta in my direction, after he was offended by me for asking him not to flood in my topic:
March 11, 2021 - I asked him to stop offtopic and go to a special topic for such discussions.
On March 12, 2021, he is rude to me.
On March 17, 2021, he creates a topic where he complains that his posts have been deleted.
March 19, 2021 he writes me another false review with insults
On March 26, 2021, he creates a topic discussing my behavior on the forum.
March 26, 2021 he asks the moderators to ban me.
So what can be concluded from all this? He uses various methods, be it self-moderated reputation topics or neutral reviews, in order to somehow take revenge on his offenders. Look at how he responds to people's requests or what language he tries to communicate with those whom he considers wrong. Is it possible to take it seriously and discuss something seriously. Judging by his insults about mom, cock sucking and whores, this is an overgrown child who has never really been responsible for his filthy words in his life, so he thinks that everything he says and does is normal, and he has to this is right, but others are not. Others do not even have the right to say anything to him, even to make a remark.