I mean, Ila gave it a good shot, but as Nathan pointed out and Naomi discovered, part of the problem with stable ethereal constructs is destroying them with brute force is quite challenging. While they can be obliterated by enough input from physics as they interact with the real world enough that it goes both ways, without damaging the form, it just regenerates if has enough mana. We’ve seen the same thing with Kally’s dragon when it was fighting the null caster, as well as when Naomi was trying to punch on to pieces. Of course, Naomi did eventually succeed, but as Mione has noted, just because Naomi does something, one shouldn’t really take that as a good plan. We’ve also seen Mium shatter red constructs completely, but other characters have pointed out that he is somehow extremely efficient at nullifying magic.

I would note that Camilla probably knows she is somewhat out of her league against red construct of that size and apparent power, but she has a bad personality when it comes to always trying to put herself in front of other people when it comes to danger. She is also not wrong per se in her methodology, trying to handle both defense and offense would exhaust a normal mage extremely quickly, and it is probably clear to, well, anyone that Ila is far more suited to offense than defense.

A mage like Tyler or Marc, or even like Camilla and Kally, will tend to set up a defensive bastion, and then attempt to attack outward from it (when operating on their own). If they prefer to focus on defense (like Tyler) or on offense (like Kally) will vary, but in both cases defending is necessary as it’s just too easy to kill a human. Ila only bothered to block the attacks from the construct because she was supposed to save the humans, and does not typically fight like that, as she needs almost all of her calculations to attack most effectively, forcing her to drop her barriers to attack with her, well, pebbles.