Steph Yap Reaches 200M Merit

Two hundred million merit. It was a looming shadow. For Steph Yap, it wasn't just some abstract milestone or a vanity project. It was the goal. The target. He had spent months, maybe years, watching that number tick up. Slowly. Painfully. Every kingdom he jumped into, every banner he fought under,MFA being the latest. it was all for that specific weight. It stood for every hour of sleep lost and every hospital bill paid in digital blood. He was close now. Close enough to taste it. But merit at that level doesn't come for free. You have to go out and take it. And in Kingdom 105, he found exactly what he needed to cross the finish line.

Kingdom 105 wasn’t a friendly place. It had history. The alliances there were the kind that didn't forget a face. GEU was the big name on the block. They were organized. They were dangerous. Usually, if you see a GEU tag, you see a bubble. But then there was Krumov. A castle just sitting there. No shield. No bubble glow. Steph didn’t move immediately. He’s been in the game for too long to fall for a simple trap. He watched. He waited for the heartbeat. One moment passed. Then two. The castle stayed open. It was an invitation written in arrogance or a very expensive mistake. Either way, Steph was going to answer it!

He sent the scouts in. The report came back, and it was a strange one. Cavalry. A wall of horses and steel. A massive count of T4 troops, but the kicker was the lack of T5. Not a single one in the city. Krumov was rocking in his shiny rebel gear. High damage, low defense. And the weirdest part? No meatshield. No T1 junk to soak up the first few hits. It was all core. All meat. It was a city built to hit hard, but it wasn't built to take a punch. Steph felt the adrenaline rise. This was it. This was the hunt that would put him in the record books. He committed to the target right then. No backing out anymore.

The first solo march left the castle. It felt like an eternity for the red flash to hit the screen. When the report landed, it was ugly. Spear against cavalry, a classic counter, but the price was high. Without any meatshield, every single death on both sides was a core troop. Steph’s spears were dying in thousands. Krumov’s horses were dying in tens of thousands. It was a bloodbath on paper. It wasn’t a clean trade. It was expensive. Steph sat in his chair, staring at the red numbers. A lot of players would have stopped there. They’d see the hospital bills and the power drop and they’d run. Not Steph. He knew the math. You have to break the outer shell before you get the merit.

He launched the second hit before the first one even made it back to base. He had to keep the pressure on. Again, it was a meat grinder. The absence of a meatshield meant there was nowhere for the damage to hide. It went straight into Krumov’s best soldiers. The power drop was a steady, agonizing slide. This is the part of the hunt where the silence gets loud. You start wondering if the guy is suddenly going to wake up and bubble. You wonder if a rally is going to land on your head. Steph pushed those thoughts aside. He stayed with the plan. Consistency isn’t about being fast, it’s about being strong and calm when things get uncomfortable.

By the third attack, the rhythm of battle changed. The 3rd report came back, and for the first time, it didn't look like a horror. The damage was shifting in Steph’s favor. The cavalry defense was starting to lose its power. The horses weren’t absorbing the impact anymore. They were just dying. Steph took a breath. He could see the end of the road. The city was still fighting, but it had lost its teeth.

The fourth solo was a landslide. Steph’s losses dropped to almost nothing. His damage went through the roof. It was a massacre now. Without T5s to stabilize the lines, the remaining T4s were just folding under the weight of the spears. That rebel gear was useless now because there wasn't enough of an army left to make use of the stats. The momentum was a physical thing. Steph wasn't even thinking about the cost anymore. He was just watching the merit counter. It was climbing!

The fifth march was the final nail. He didn't slow down. He didn't even check the report from the fourth attack. He just sent them straight back to the target. When the spears hit the walls this time, the resistance just evaporated. The report was short. The city was zeroed. The lord was captured. Five hits, exactly as he’d planned. No shortcuts. No mistakes. He sat there for a long time after the final report came in. He scrolled back to the beginning. He looked at those first two bloody, expensive attacks. They were the key. Most people fail because they are not willing to pay the price. They want the merit without the losses. Steph understood that you have to bleed a little to win a lot. Those early hits broke the structure. Everything else was just cleaning up the mess.

Then he checked his profile. The numbers had finalized. Two hundred million merit. He’d done it. The milestone was hit. It hadn’t come from a flashy rally or a lucky hit on a tiny target. It had come from a methodical, grinding dismantling of a GEU giant in Kingdom 105. The map stayed quiet. No one moved. No one spoke. Just that heavy, final silence. Steph reviewed the hunt one last time. The lack of T5s had been the fatal flaw. The lack of a meatshield had been the opening. Even the biggest cities fall if you hit them in the right spot for long enough. He took the lesson and locked it away. He didn't post the reports to brag. He didn't yell in the world chat. He just closed the menu and went back to the map.

But the hunger was still there. That calm hadn't shifted an inch. Two hundred million merit was a milestone, sure. It was a victory. But it wasn't the end of the path. It was just a marker. As long as the kingdoms stayed quiet and the mistakes stayed visible, the spears would stay sharp. The hunt never really ends. It just moves on to the next target...