There was something to be said for a lack of subtlety, Balyn thought. Some of his foes mixed it up: rending bites, blunt slaps of clublike limbs, sprays of toxic blood, showers of arcane power drawn from the heart of the abyssal cosmos, and a dozen other horrors. Not so the Watchdog of the Old Lords. It vomited lava. It exploded fire in all directions. It turned itself into a giant fireball and charged at him across the arena. On the occasions when Balyn got in close and hit it, the blood that sprayed from its wounds was more like glowing magma, liquid flame, than either normal blood or the grayish ichor of the kin. There was an elegance to its simplicity.
Not that he was really inclined to sit around admiring its aesthetic appeal as a sweep of the beast's head rendered him down to literal dogmeat yet again.
~X X X~
"Welcome home, go—"
"That does it!" Balyn shouted, storming up the steps to the workshop without even so much as letting the Plain Doll finish her greeting. He flung open the coffin-like storage box and began rooting through the assorted tools, weapons, and general bric-a-brac that he had gathered during the seemingly endless night of the hunt.
"What is it, good hunter?" the Doll asked, having tagged along curiously.
"Aha!" Balyn crowed, pulling out the folded shape of his saw spear. The weapon was similar to his cleaver, only the handle and saw were straight rather than curved, and the blade's serrations were on both sides. He then turned his head and flinched in surprise; the Doll usually didn't come up here in Gehrman's domain. "Ah! Don't sneak up on a fellow like that!"
"I did speak to you," she pointed out.
"Well, be louder; I was making too much noise to hear you."
She did not change expression, but he nonetheless felt disapproval washing off of her at his rudeness. Some days Balyn thought the Doll would be a good mother; she had that way about her that let you know you were being naughty and left you squirming about it with just a look.
"A-anyway," he stammered past the point, "I'm getting tired of being baked into a puppy biscuit over and over again. There's a saying where I come from...wherever that is...about there being no bad dogs, but I've decided that doesn't apply in Yharnam!"
"If it's called a 'watchdog,' then doesn't that mean that it is properly doing its job?" the Doll wondered.
"...Okay, that's a point. But either way, I'm going to have to rely on special tactics to deal with that mutt! Do you know if we have any dill blood gems? I've seen warm, damp, sharp, heavy..."
"I do not think that I have ever heard of a dill blood gem. Why do you want to find one?"
"Because, good Doll, a hot dog is best served with a pickle spear." He snapped the saw open to its extended mode with a dramatic flourish. "And believe you me, I'm going to take him down with relish."