I created all kinds of sensors in my body that I could think of. In addition, searched the area in the optical and radio bands. Pretty quickly, I discovered the source of the radio signals. They were encrypted or had some unknown format, but judging of the frequency and localization, they were radio conversations of several intelligent beings.

When approached the source of the signals, I discovered another anomaly. I did not give up trying to somehow apply the knowledge of the Ancients in this world, and therefore, among others, created in my body a container filled with liquid helium in the state of Bose-Einstein condensate. And now I was recording a spontaneous track of the quantum state of this substance, which had the form of 'threads' pointing to a certain point on the ground. That's where I went.

The source of the anomaly was in the rock under the mountain. When I landed not far from it, I scanned the mountain in other ways and found caverns that came out to the surface in one place. The radio sources were moving in my direction, so I decided to 'go public'.

To do this, I threw off more than half of my mass and gave to it the appearance of an ordinary stone, for one placing inside the beacon of the chakra. The remaining matter took the form of a human in a spacesuit, copying the image from the same game Crysis 3. In my opinion, it was the most beautiful and modern design of the suit from all that I have ever seen. Looking at it, it is immediately clear that this is a killing machine. Wild, unbridled, primal power in a shell of advanced technology.

I was now in a ravine overgrown with trees and bushes. Somewhere off to the side, a river gurgled. I took my bearings and headed for the nearest radio signal source. Scanned the area ahead with my eyes, but also looked with short-wave radar. At the same time, my eyes also perceived infrared and ultraviolet radiation.

With this advantage, I saw the target in range of two hundred meters, and on a hundred meters already knew who they are. Ahead of them, a krogan was moving through the forest with the grace of a rhinoceros. As far as I could remember from the game the anatomy of this life form, the krogans had eyes that looked sideways, so it was difficult to get close to them from the side or behind. But from above their view was limited by the frontal bone armor. So, if I wanted to take the them by surprise, it was worth attacking them from above.

Fortunately, the terrain here was suitable for such a direction of attack. We were in the deepest part of the gorge, and all around were tall trees with a trunk diameter of from one meter to three. I quickly selected the tree that the krogan was supposed to pass by and quickly grew claws and climbed to a height of ten meters. Here I hided myself by foliage and a magical disguise.

The unsuspecting victim, with a loud stomping passed right under me. Krogan, of course, was on guard and moved the muzzle of the gun from side to side, but he did not expect an attack from above. I swooped down and fell on his head like a snowball, immediately applying paralysis spell to him.

I has not familiar with krogan biochemistry, so I used the most reliable version of the spell, blocking the mobility of tissues and turning the victim into a natural statue. After that, I applied a diagnostic spell in a fraction of a second, and based on the results of its work, I used magic that blocks the passage of electrical signals through all kinds of tissues. And finally, completely knocked out the consciousness from the helpless victim.

I expected the magic in krogan's body may dissipate quickly but learned that the spells in his aura were able to hold as good as in mine. After that, I was able to relax and focus on extracting information from his mind about 'language'.

First of all, I searched what languages the prisoner knew. To my surprise, he turned out to be a real polyglot. He could speak fluently in languages of the krogan, asari, salarians, batarians, humans, and even vorcha. Also, he knew the very basics of the turian, volus, and quarian languages. The language of the humans was a dialect of English, but my English would have been difficult to understand even on the Earth.

I started the process of copying the language database, and began to look through krogan's knowledge of events in the galaxy. Here the catch was smaller. I only learned out that about a year or two ago the Geths attacked the Citadel and wiped out its population, including the entire Council. This indicated that I was in the area of the second part of the game.

Well, finally, I asked about the personal life of the subject, but rather the question 'What the hell is he doing here at all?'. As it turned out, krogan was the 'power support' of the team of ‘tomb riders' who were looking for traces of the ancient civilizations on this planet.

By the time I had learned all the languages, two more members of the party had emerged from the forest. They were two asari, now staring at me in surprise, or rather at my spacesuit.

"Who are you?" I said to them in their language, rising to my feet beside the krogan carcass. Apparently, the people here were quite unafraid, because only one of the asari drew a gun, and the second hid behind her back. However, krogan had enough weapons for ten. Except that he was lying on the ground, only beginning to recover after I removed the paralyzing spell.

"Who are you?" Tria protested, the happy owner of the gun and the head of this company. Despite her seemingly defenseless appearance, she was a fairly strong biotic.

"I asked first.” I answered, approaching them. I didn't have a weapon in my hands, but the asari were clearly worried.

But it was not they who attacked me, a krogan who had regained consciousness. With a wild roar, he leaped at me from his prone position, intending to crush me with his weight. But I easily dodged, grabbed krogan's arm, and then brought it behind his back and broke it in the shoulder and elbow joints, for one thing plopping the loser's face right into the mud of a well-turned puddle. Before the asari could blink, I found myself sitting astride a krogan, who was impressed by my physical strength and made no further attempt to stand up.

"So, will you answer my questions? Or will I have to come up with a method of interrogation that involves prolonged mating in the most unexpected positions for you?”

The second asari, Rina, turned blue to this suggestion, indicating that she was sexually aroused. This information about the biology of the alien race, as well as the names of the archaeologists, I learned from krogan's memory. But Tria did not share her partner's romantic moods, so she hastened to confess everything.

"We're archaeologists. We will explore this planet in order to find here traces of ancient civilizations.”

"Real archaeologists in Terminus systems?" This planet was at the back of the galaxy, and in fact there was no official authority, except for the batarian pirates.

"Hey, I have a doctorate in Archaeology and Xenobiology!" Rina protested, stepping out from behind her boss.

"So, who are you?" Tria repeated, deciding it was her turn to ask questions.

Who am I? I thought about it for a moment, then cleared my mind to think carefully about the answer to that question. In fact, I used to take names that were inherited from my body donors or that made sense in the context of the world I was in. But who am I as a person?

I think it's time for me to make a name for myself that I will use in all the worlds. And for a name to be appropriate, it must somehow describe me and my qualities. Who am I? I am a soul that changes bodies like gloves. To refer to the soul as an individual consciousness in my home world, there was the word 'Atman'. I think it would be a good name.

"My name is Atman.” I said, stepping out of the stool. "And how are you doing in finding ancient artifacts?" I asked in response.

After that, all three nonhumans tensed, including the seemingly relaxed krogan.

"Almost nothing.” Honestly answered Rina, making a disgruntled face. “The most successful can be considered to be the finding of a field pot a couple of hundred years old at the site of the previous archaeological expedition.”

"Then come on, I'll show you the entrance to the underground Ancients base." All three archaeologists stared at me with wide eyes. "What?"

"Will you just show us the location of the Ancients’ base?" Tria asked incredulously.

"Oh, there would be something to hide? If you're so concerned about my motives, I'll take a couple of most valuable finds. I am doing to you a favor."

"All right, lead the way." Asari finally decided. Apparently, greed in her head had won over caution. She also rightly believed that if I wanted to, I could tie them all three together. Plus, she was counting on the help of the ship's pilot, whose help signal she had sent at the very beginning of our meeting.

I lifted krogan easily to his feet, setting his arm in one motion. He rubbed the injured limb, glared at me in silence, and then took his place in the rearguard to keep me and the two asari in sight. I went in the opposite direction, where all this company had been going before.

“Hither. There are five kilometers need to go.” I pointed the way.

But after about five hundred meters we came to a wide clearing on the threads of the river, and immediately a small flyer came down from the sky, driven by a salarian. The space ship of these archaeologists was more than a hundred meters long, so it was not suitable for short-distance flights. For these purposes, there was an orbital shuttle on board with good armor and weapons.

But the salarian decided to use a lighter and more maneuverable flyer, which could easily slip through the trees in the forest and was armed with a heavy blaster. That's just this miracle of technology was missing such a structural element as the roof. In fact, it was an advanced version of the convertible.

The flyer came down from the sky, taking me in its sights. At the same time, the trio of archaeologists wisely moved away from me, so as not to stand in the line of fire. That's just what no one else was expecting. No one but me, of course.