As you open the book, it begins to disintegrate and the pages turn to dust in your hands.  You manage to keep a few fragments and read the handwritten script.  The book appears to be about monsters, and from what you can make out it contains a full description of a monster called the Bloodbeast.  It is a horrific bloated creature with tough, spiny skin and facial blisters which burst open to become mock eyes, evolved to hide the Bloodbeast's only weak spot - its real eyes.  Bloodbeasts usually dwell in pools of fetid slime which give off a poisonous gas.  The gas is so strong that it can easily knock people unconscious.  The Bloodbeast, although too bulbous to haul itself out of its slime pool, has a long and vicious tongue which it wraps around its victims before it drags them into the pool.  As the victim's flesh starts to decompose in the vile slime, the Bloodbeast will feed from it.  You tell Throm about the Bloodbeast, but he merely shrugs his shoulders and tells you to get going.<br/><br/><em>Your choices are to return to the black book and do something with the potion, or to continue north with Throm.</em>