Does Daruk's Protection absorb damage?

Daruk's Protection does not reflect damage, and cannot be used to kill a guardian.

To kill a guardian, you need to do one of the following:

• Do a perfect parry with your shield against the guardian's laser attack. If the guardian is capable of walking around, you will need to do this multiple times. If your timing is less than perfect, this may also use up a hit on Daruk's Protection. If you're feeling brave, you can disable Daruk's Protection in the "key items" section of your inventory to prevent this from happening. However, this will make it harder to parry because Daruk will no longer be fixing your mistakes for you.
  • Guardians make a "beep" noise right before they shoot. If you parry right after the beep, with a little practice, you should be able to successfully parry most laser attacks.
• Wield an Ancient Shield, and block the guardian's laser attack with it. It will reflect automatically, without requiring a parry. This consumes durability, unlike parrying. You can acquire an Ancient Shield from the Akkala Ancient Tech Lab in exchange for rupees and ancient parts.
  • This does not work with the "regular" shields you get from the combat trials and other mini-guardian enemies. You have to purchase the shield from Robbie's lab.
• Shoot the guardian with an ancient arrow. Unlike all other enemies, guardians will still drop loot if killed in this manner. Ancient arrows can be found as rare loot or purchased from Robbie's lab.
• Just keep shooting the guardian's eye with non-ancient arrows, or hitting it with ordinary attacks, until its HP is depleted. This takes a while and can be riskier than the other methods.
• Use Urbosa's Fury to damage and stun the guardian.