Garlean attacks aren't magic, so what are they?

[thegreatonemal]

Mastery of Resonance gave Zenos access to some very Ascian-like abilities which were almost 100% definitely a sort of magic. He never demonstrates "conventional" magic, like say casting spells, but he also wasn't trained as a mage. His applications of aether were always far more direct. Many of these abilities did not make a return in Endwalker for unknown reasons.



Not crystals. Those swords were themselves enchanted, and he most likely used Garlean technology to further augment their capabilities/his techniques.



Hien states, and I quote,
"Magic? With a Garlean body? That's hardly fair..."

This is said in response to Elidibus doing something blatantly magical without calling upon the unique properties of Zenos's arsenal. He emits a shockwave that immediately defeats those assembled to face him. Prior to that he'd been utilizing other blatantly magical skills, also without utilizing the weapons' enchantments. He started out using Zenos's skills, but after a while he was forced to start mixing in magic.

https://youtu.be/_yvCSDrAWCw?t=189

Here's a YouTube video for reference. You can see here Hien reacts rather vocally upon first seeing Elidibus start pulling out the stops. While he did involve one of the swords here, that was not one of Zenos's techniques. It's also distinctly different from the enchantment we know to be on that particular weapon. You can see other, more blatant examples of outright magic both during the fight and in the following cutscene.

The resonance gives one the ability to manipulate aether if they could not do so already. Zenos says this himself after Fordola under goes the procedure. I'm gonna paraphrase here "What you have been given is far more than simply wielding magicks." The lore for the second boss in the lvl 68 is that he underwent a prototype of the resonance and it was successful in granting that garlean the ability to cast magic. It also broke his mind and drove him insane. Zenos can just cast magic. He just doesn't most of the time for all we know