EXCLUSIVE / TOP PLAYER INTERVIEW
Inside the Team Building of
Inside the Team Building of
"Maron" — 708M Total Power
109 cards, all at Lv.200 and fully awakened. How does the top of the ladder decide what to field?
708,209,070TOTAL POWER
Squad 2 alone sits at 193M. Squad 3 at 154M, Squad 4 at 143M — multiple 40M+ units stacked in a single squad. He has also cleared down to Abyss Floor 316. We spoke with Maron, strategist of the guild Kuroneko (くろねこ) on server J-06, one of the strongest players PARALABO has confirmed so far, about how he builds squads and how he approaches the deepest Abyss floors.
- Player
- Maron (見習い魔王まろん)
- Guild
- くろねこ / Kuroneko (Strategist)
- Server
- J-06
- Abyss reached
- Floor 316
- Total power
- 708,209,070
- Cards owned
- 109 (all Lv.200, fully awakened)
- Interviewed
- September 13, 2026
- Source
- Screenshots provided by the player
01What each squad is for
PARA
LABO
LABO
PARALABO
Could you explain the role of each of your four squads?
Maron
From the top squad down:
・A debuff squad built from leftover characters. Combined with the debuff squad, it also sends out 60–70M squads — keeping damage low against stacked defenses, that sort of role.
・First line, built without worrying about elemental matchups
Set up so it can beat squads up to 20M above it.
・Second line, also ignoring elemental matchups
One character will be swapped once another finishes leveling.
・Third line, ignoring matchups
Still in training.
Since every character is fully awakened and almost all of them are Lv.200, I can rebuild freely to match whatever ace the opposing guild fields.
EDITOR'S NOTE
The phrase worth pausing on is "without worrying about elemental matchups." Rather than winning through type advantage, each line is built to beat opponents 20M above it on raw strength alone — a mindset of raising every squad to the point where matchups stop mattering.
02The build to avoid: don't make your best squad a sleep squad
PARA
LABO
LABO
PARALABO
Is there a build you'd tell people to avoid?
Maron
Avoid making your strongest squad an all-sleep squad.
EDITOR'S NOTE — why sleep struggles as a main line
Poison and stun let you keep dealing heavy damage while the effect stays up. Sleep, on the other hand, breaks on even a weak hit or a tick of poison damage. The result is a squad whose real control is weaker than its power number suggests. Precisely because your top squad is the one that has to win, it needs status effects that hold.
03The most appealing character: Reika "Could It Be Me?"
PARA
LABO
LABO
PARALABO
Which character do you find the most appealing in terms of performance, and why?
Maron
Reika ("Could It Be Me?")
She spreads poison everywhere — and poison is a genuinely strong status effect, since it also cancels out Guts.
Early on, when you're short on materials, what stands out is the multiplier damage of applying poison and then following with Poison Eater. But once your poison applier is properly built, the poison damage itself becomes brutal. (Look at the logs of an Abyss floor you can't clear and check how much damage you're taking — you'll see what I mean.)
Never judge a character on their own; think in sets of at least two and look for synergy. From that angle, her partner can be any Poison Eater user, which makes her extremely flexible.
Runner-up would be Meisa + Yoko.
EDITOR'S NOTE
Poison is usually treated as setup for the Poison Eater multiplier. Maron points out that once the applier is fully built, the poison damage itself becomes the main source of damage — and that it also answers Guts users who survive at 1 HP, since the damage-over-time finishes them off. Note too that his unit of evaluation is never one character: it is always a pair.
04Underrated: Yui "Pure Gambit"
PARA
LABO
LABO
PARALABO
On the flip side, is there a character or skill that's stronger than its reputation?
Maron
Yui ("Pure Gambit").
Everyone knows Life Flip and Counter Stance are strong, yet you rarely see anyone actually building her. The staying power of Life Flip suits Time Strike, and on top of that, a percentage-based counter means she can fire Time Strike again without waiting for her turn. Even if she goes down, she heals an ally — she's genuinely an all-rounder.
She also buys turns through stun, so she gets even better inside a stun squad.
05Handling skills that only look strong: Serial Killer
Maron
I'm also careful about how I use Serial Killer.
Serial Killer is powerful, but it needs two kills to unlock — so I first ask whether the squad puts out damage assuming it never fires. If the other skills can't produce damage, it never activates in the first place.
If both Serial Killer and the other attack skills are time-based, you can place the unit in reserve; and if you do put a Serial Killer user in reserve, you build around revenge-type characters as a prerequisite.
You only field four characters, so unless you can take down two of those four without Serial Killer, it doesn't mean anything.
EDITOR'S NOTE
On a stat sheet, Serial Killer (usable after two kills, high multiplier) looks unambiguously strong. Maron's yardstick is the opposite: does the build still function if the condition is never met? Four characters take the field; if you cannot remove two of them without the skill, it never unlocks. A conditional skill only becomes real power once you can guarantee its prerequisite — and he names the concrete answers: reserve placement and revenge-type pairings.
06When you're stuck deep in the Abyss
PARA
LABO
LABO
PARALABO
When you get stuck on a deep Abyss floor, what's the first thing you do?
Maron
As you go deeper, you need volume of attempts in order to roll the high end of Counter Stance.
If a floor holds you for far too long, depending on the enemy, watch the replay — often the Counter Stance character isn't being supported by the characters around them. In that case I rearrange the order and bring in healing, a decoy, or a status-spreader.
EDITOR'S NOTE
Note the premise: deep floors are treated as a game of probability. What stands out beyond that is that he actually reviews the replays. He checks in the combat log whether the Counter Stance carry is isolated or properly supported by healing, decoys and status spreaders, then changes the order. Not "swap in something stronger and hope" — confirm what actually killed you, then fix it. That habit of verification is what sits underneath 708M power and Floor 316.
07Inside the arsenal
A few of Maron's main units. All Lv.200 and fully awakened, ranging from 30M to 46M on their own.
AFTER THE INTERVIEW
Maron's approach to gear is his own as well: "I don't put weapons or equipment on SR characters, so my total power number stays close to my actual strength." R and SR weapons get sold and converted into ROM. Because nothing is spread across characters he never fields, the 708M on display lines up closely with the force that actually takes the field — resources concentrated on the main line, while keeping an accurate read on where he currently stands. The same consistency runs through everything.
Five things we learned from Maron
- Evaluate characters in pairs, not alone"Never judge a character on their own; think in sets of at least two." A stat sheet can't show synergy.
- Price conditional skills by their prerequisiteWith something like Serial Killer, ask whether the build works assuming it never fires.
- Build raw strength that ignores matchupsNot "win with type advantage" — reach the level where you beat stronger squads without it.
- Never make your best squad a sleep squadSleep breaks on chip damage. The squad that has to win needs effects that hold, like poison or stun.
- Deep floors are probability — and then you watch the replayAttempts come first. When that fails, fix the order based on the combat log, not on instinct.
Interviewed September 13, 2026. With thanks to Maron (J-06, Kuroneko). All images provided by the player and published with permission; all figures are as of the interview date. The interview was conducted in Japanese and translated by the PARALABO editorial team.
PARALABO runs ongoing interviews with top-tier players across servers. If you'd like your own builds featured, reach out through the site or via DM on X.