Why is the old dude not butt naked like everyone else?
If we're doing this, we might as well go all the way and have wrinkly old man nutsack scrape all over the floor.
Thank you for that completely horrifying image. I will have nightmares forever.
Well this is silly, the swords are doing all the work for her. All she has to do is block.
I suppose you'd still say that if you were in a cage match with three trained killers. Blocking is rather tough to do when you're outnumbered. I'm an amateur blunt weapon (usually staff) user. I know a few quarterstaff moves from watching people, and some sword skills, so I can technically fight "two sworded" with bamboo. I was at a farm and we were goofing off, and I could beat most of the other people fighting with bamboo in single combat, and block effectively. However, as soon as they came at me from two sides, dividing my concentration was pretty difficult, and I routinely got clobbered. This by the way was against kids less than half my age, meaning when it was just one, I could block and counter without hurting them seriously. From two directions, I lost to kids.
There is actually way more skill involved in blocking than attacking. Most people can win at chess by being hyperaggressive, but winning a game of the same where you simply counter all advances, and then "oh, checkmate" yea that's a bit harder.
Also, I think there is a learning curve to these swords. They do in fact operate on repulsion (yay, I was right!) but initially all they did was halt the force of the attack. What she's doing now is effectively pushing the attacks back with her own strength.
In all likelihood, the limit to the swords is her limit. As in, if someone were to use a continuous energy pulse (think force lightning from Star Wars), and keep solid pressure going, Bern might have trouble pushing back the attack. No, the swords aren't absorbing the energy, they are pushing stuff back.
These swords probably couldn't smash a wall. They are a defensive not offensive sword. The reason these swords smashed, the reason the spells reflected?
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AttackReflectorThe sword smashed because its own magically enhanced force rebounded.
The spells turned back because of the same.
Because of this, her enemies rather than being "high-level" (it wouldn't make a difference) either use nonmagical tricks (the extending staff may have been just a retractable staff with a taser attached) or have real weapon skill. It's like Inuyasha's Backlash Wave, it probably has a stronger effect the more powerful magic the attack, so ironicallly "high-level" attacks are precisely what opponents will avoid using.
Also, btw, these weren't unrecognizable effects. Bolo Girl used a razor wind effect, the old guy used a flame sphere.