Webcomic / Egg Of The Elf

Egg of the Elf is a fantasy Gender Bender comedy Manhua by MAD Cocoon.

Humans and elves coexist on the bountiful Zibori continent. However, 500 years ago the continent was thrown into chaos by the Demon King. His rampage was eventually stopped by the combined efforts of ten brave knights, but prior to his death the Demon King unleashed a curse on the humans of the continent. From that day forward, they would only be able to bear male children, which would eventually lead to their extinction. The curse could not be lifted, however, in recognition of the humans' bravery in defeating the Demon King, the elves altered humanity's 'Divine Vein' so that each human would be born with a single magical 'elf egg.' These eggs could be bet in duels, with the loser of the duel losing their egg and transforming into a woman.

The story begins with the half-elf Atalanta being propositioned by his childhood friend Mickey to an elf egg duel. Atalanta is glad to have him finally come out and say it, since they've both liked each other for a while now. As they initiate the duel, Mickey asks Atalanta to surrender peacefully, since Atalanta's never been able to defeat him in the school tournaments. Atalanta smiles...

and proceeds to uppercut Mickey into the sky.

From there, Atalanta and his new wife are drawn into a series of adventures involving bandits, terrorists, corrupt politicians, and a new Demon King. And Gender Bending. Lots and lots of Gender Bending.

Egg of the Elf shows examples of the following tropes:

• Aerith and Bob: Various named characters include Atalanta, Tiamat, Dante, Tigero, Roland, Mickey, Julie, Jack, Barry, and Bob.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: One or two notable exceptions aside, this goes for just about everyone we see without an elf egg. The women of the setting tend to exist on a scale of 'cute' to 'gorgeous,' while the men tend to be drawn with a wider range appearances. Even Atalanta, one of the few characters who's been a guy for his entire life, makes a pretty cute girl on account of crossdressing.
• Battle Harem: Atalanta's devotees consist of a skilled swordswoman, a lycanthrope and notorious former bandit leader, and one of the most skilled paladins in the kingdom. There are also shades of Bodyguarding a Badass.
• Beast Man: They're present, and are capable of interbreeding with humans, and as a result are subject to humanity's curse and are capable of possessing elf eggs. There seems to be a variety of subtypes, incorporating traits from different kinds of animals including various mammals and reptiles. Lycanthropes are one of the strongest subtypes.
• Black Magic: Though the details are sketchy, withcraft seems to be shaping up to be this. It's mostly mentioned in association with demons and human experimentation.
  • Also, offensive elf egg magic, which was originally developed by assassins and lets a wielder consume the elf eggs of their devotees to fuel offensive effects.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Atalanta plotted for years to turn a duel around on Mickey in order to turn him into a girl, and is not shy about looking forward to eventually consummating their relationship. However, he also staunchly refuses to use her elf egg to force the issue, instead giving her as much time as she feels she needs to acclimate.
• Disguised in Drag: Atalanta's father started crossdressing when Atalanta was very young in order to stave off sexual harassment from the Depraved Homosexual population of the village they settled in, and had Atalanta take up the practice as well when he got old enough.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Elf eggs are small, round objects. Women don't have them. Men, at least after winning their first duel, have a pair of them. The comic is not shy about leaning into the various resulting jokes.
• Emergency Transformation: Becoming a devotee repairs your body (at least until you turn back), so men who are gravely injured can give up their elf eggs in order to survive. Roland uses this method to survive after locking himself inside an inside-out protection spell with a suicide bomber.
  • Later, Atalana uses the same trick on his father in order to save him from having his egg forcibly stolen by a demon's magic.
• Gender Bender: Ingrained in the setting to the point of being a metaphysical law.
• Healing Magic Is the Hardest: Double Subverted. Healing magic does not appear to be appreciably more difficult to use than other kinds of learned magic, and the costs of training a paladin aside, are actually fairly accessible. The problem is that early on in its use people became over-reliant on it, leading some people to become reckless or self-harming and paladins to work themselves to the point of exhaustion keeping up with demand. It also began to crowd out more traditional medical workers, which was a problem as healing magic turned out to be less effective at healing diseases than physical injuries, resulting in an overall increase in the kingdom's death toll. As a result, healing magic is now one of the most regulated types out there, which means a lot of people have to recover from injuries the old-fashioned way.
• If It's You, It's Okay: Mickey has some obvious misgivings about being the girl in a relationship. However, when she imagines a scenario where she turns back as a result of Atalanta losing a duel, she readily admits to herself that she'd much rather Atalanta be her man than anyone else's girl.
• Magic A Is Magic A: Played With. The basic functions of the elf's duels are straightforward to the point of the church publishing an in-universe rulebook explaining them (excerpts of which are included with some of the chapters). However, there are a variety of other magical elements in the setting that are not as clearly laid out, and there are a few noteworthy cases that fly in the face of the established understanding (see Wrong Context Magic below) of the elf eggs.
  • Every human (as well as half-humans who share humanity's 'Divine Vein') is born with a single elf egg. After they turn fourteen, they can bet their egg against another man's in a duel. The loser of the duel loses their egg to the victor and turns into a woman.
  • The first time someone loses an elf's duel, they will magically receive a fitting outfit and hairstyle to go with their new body.
  • Both parties must decide to take part in the duel.
  • The winner is known as a 'wielder' and the loser as his 'devotee.' A wielder can use the elf egg to compel obedience from a devotee, within certain limits (if a wielder tried to order a devotee to commit suicide, for example, their self-preservation instinct would override the compulsion).
  • After 24 hours, a wielder can willingly choose to return a devotee's egg and transform them back into a man.
  • If a wielder is defeated in a duel and turned into someone else's devotee, all the eggs they've collected will be returned to their original owners, turning them back into men.
  • If a wielder is killed, their devotees will be free to continue living as women or to reclaim their eggs at any time by having an elf perform a certain ritual.
  • A wielder cannot engage in duels while any of their devotees are pregnant, and cannot return an egg to a currently-pregnant devotee.
  • All damage sustained during a duel is erased at the end of it.
  • Elf eggs have a set amount of durability based on the spiritual power of the owner, which is worn down slightly with each duel they take part in. If someone seriously overtaxes their egg, it will eventually disappear, leaving them stuck as a woman but unable to bear children (or get officially married, by the legal customs of Zibori).
  • A person's male and female bodies track physical injury separately, and so a man can be saved from near-death by transforming into a woman and vice-versa. However, these injuries remain and reappear if the person switches back, so if both bodies are already equally injured there is no benefit to switching. Age and disease carry over between both bodies.
  • Elf magic can be used to expand and modify these duels to a battle royale scale, with both free-for-all and team versions being shown. In the free-for-all, multiple people can team up on a single target with the one who dealt the most damage winning their egg, but the risk of all participants on the larger side turning into women if one of them is defeated. A team battle continues until one side is completely wiped out, at which point everyone is revived, with those on the losing side becoming the devotees of whoever on the winning side defeated them.
  • Mickey and his friends discover additional rules through scientific observation and experimentation, such as that the eggs are circled by invisible elvish runes that spell out apparent gibberish, it takes a second after the duel is declared for the magic to start taking effect, and that the degree to which the duelists are shielded from the outside world is dependent upon their power.
• Militaries Are Useless: The human kingdom's military is actually shown to have quite a few capable members, such as Tiamat, Dante, and Roland. However, when it comes to invading the demons' base of The Tower, they're completely ineffective, as The Tower can detect their approach and warp space to relocate itself. It even does this in response to long-range attack spells. As a result, the kingdom is instead reliant upon private adventurers to explore The Tower, since it allows them to approach without issue. Upon understanding the full scope of the situation, Alatanta notes that the academy he and Mickey attend having adventuring skills as part of the curriculum suddenly makes far more sense, and the kingdom must be really desperate to deal with The Tower if they're training so many people to be able to explore it.
• Mundane Utility: Roland can use healing magic to regrow people's hair after it's been chopped off for a disguise, and in a gag panel uses it to add meat to a partially eaten turkey leg. Though, Tiamat does note that Roland is probably the only person practiced enough with healing magic to pull off the hair trick.
• Our Demons Are Different: Though their capabilities are vaguely defined, they seem to be the primary antagonists of the setting. They have sharp teeth, pointed ears, and a variety of skin tones including brown, blue, and green. So far their main defining trait seems to be their skill with curse magic. It's also noteworthy that the current Demon King was once a half-elf.
• Our Elves Are Different: Elves are one of the races that coexists alongside humankind on Zibori, and, being the ones who altered the human race to be born with elf eggs, are the primary reason for both their continued existence and the current state of society. So far all of the elves seen in the comic have appeared to be female (and the same blonde as Atalanta), but there's been no indication given if they're a One-Gender Race or not. They are capable of having children with humans, resulting in half-elves, though this is culturally frowned upon. They seem to have very powerful magic, as not only were they able to alter humans to produce elf eggs, but the current king made a contract with them to replace his 90+ year old body with a much younger one, prolonging his lifespan. They don't have elf eggs of their own, as evidenced by the fact that Atalanta having one is taken as proof that he's half-human. They also seem to make up the bulk of the clergy of the continent's predominant religion (which is followed by humans and elves alike).
• Our Fairies Are Different: Fairies are a reclusive race that have the appearance of traditional pixies; they look just like elves in miniature (about a handspan tall) and with dragonfly wings on their backs. The fact that a certain demon-detecting artifact can use a half-elf's life energy as a substitute for its fossilized fairy power source also points to a further relation between the two races. They've become more social towards the other races in recent years, and are especially popular with adventurers exploring The Tower since they can accompany any adventuring team past its protective barrier and can decipher many of the warnings and instructions written inside.
• Our Goblins Are Different: They're green, have sharp teeth and pointed ears, and are around the size of humans. Males have pronounced noses and seem to all be bald, while the one female goblin we've seen had hair and much softer features. They're closely related enough to humans that they possess elf eggs and are affected by the Demon King's curse to only bear male children. They seem to exist mostly on the outskirts of human society, and one character notes that he doesn't think there'd be many people willing to hire a goblin. They also have some affinity with explosives, to the point that demons sometimes hire them to make Fantastic Nukes out of the corpse of the last Demon King.
• Secret Test of Character: Mickey's mother's staged duel to the death with Atalanta turn out to be this for Mickey. To settle the matter of her disapproving of their marriage, she and Atalanta had a bet on which Mickey would value more; her elf egg or her husband's life. Not only did Mickey step in to physically defend Atalanta when it looked like her mother was going to kill him so she could reclaim her egg, but she swore that if he died she'd remain as a woman, just as her mother had in order to honor her dead father. Seeing Mickey's resolve, her mother relented and gave the two her blessing.
• Super-Strength: Lycanthropes are noted to be about as strong as ten human men. Half-elves also have a variant; normally their strength is about he same as that of an average human, but they can bring out explosive power that dwarfs that of lycanthropes in short bursts. In half-elves' case, they try to keep this fact quiet in order to better integrate into society.
• There Was a Door: At one point, Mickey invites Atalanta along to a meeting of a small student group she leads devoted to scientifically studying the magic of elf eggs, and the two plan to arrive separately to avoid drawing attention. When Atalanta arrives, he can't find their hideout's secret entrance. So he decides to just let himself in through the wall.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Atalanta and his father both qualify, even if "wholesome" might be a bit of a generous descriptor for Atalanta's personality as a whole.
• Wrong Context Magic: There are a few notable exceptions to the normal rules surrounding elf eggs seen over the course of the story:
  • Margeret the bartender, at least according to her own account, was born as a woman and has never had an elf egg to begin with, which should be impossible under the Demon King's curse and the elves' blessing.
  • Jack Nikolai is one of a small group of people (later heavily implied to all be descended from Amazons) for whom the magic of elf eggs works in reverse; whenever he loses a duel, he claims the winner's egg and they become his devotee. Likewise, when he wins a duel, he loses his egg and becomes the loser's devotee.
  • The demon haunting Atalanta's home village is able to mark people with a touch, which allows him to steal their eggs without a duel and despite not even having an elf egg of his own. This doesn't work on devotees, since they are no longer in possession of their own eggs. There are also carnivorous plants that can steal men's elf eggs and turn them into girls by biting them in the unmentionables, which Roland describes as 'a kind of demon.'
  • There was a case of a man being magically turned into a tree, which resulted in an inanimate plant that could nonetheless participate in elf's duels. As a result, people could challenge the tree and then "forfeit" to gain all the potential benefits of losing a duel without having to submit to a wielder in the process. It turned out that the tree was also capable of losing a duel, with everything that entails. It was just waiting for the right person.

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