Sora had made his choice and had to stick with it now, the way things looked now he had 120 stars left over from his initial 210, and the fact that he still had so many relieved him slightly as the last thing he needed on his mind now was the thought of not being able to see his own choice out. The process of cultivating intermediate magic though was simple, you would take 10 basic soul stars you have made from cultivating and fuse them in a particular way that Sora was all too familiar with at this point, he had worked with Mage Masters and Grandmasters in the past, the complexity of fusing 10 basic stars to make an intermediate star was lost on him.
The thing that rubbed Sora the wrong way was that without the abundance of mana around him that he had almost mistakenly gotten used to over the past week, it would take him an hour to fuse the first 2 stars and then 10 minutes for the other 8. In the end, he took 15 minutes per extra star to ensure quality and ended up using 3 hours to form 1 Intermediate star and an extra 10 minutes to fuse it to his Intermediate Mana Core.
The thing Sora was thankful for was that he was as experienced with the theory of this as he was because once he got a hang of the first one thanks to his time wasting the others came naturally to him and he took significantly less time with each star, so much so that by the fourth 1 he was making an intermediate star every hour. Sora was able to finish making and fusing 10 intermediate Soul Stars in 15 hours after starting at 6 in the morning sharp- After the days' effort he had put in Sora had made himself a Perfect Intermediate Mage with 20 stars left to go.
The mistake that people made in magic cultivation as a non-mage was assuming that the difficult part was cultivating your mana- No, that was always the short bit. The thing that made most people shed tears at the thought of cultivating their whole life was the elemental magic side of things. Sure It would take Sora 1 at most when next he wants to make an intermediate star, he would still need to make the 10 basic stars required for said intermediate star. He would then need to make give or take 100 intermediate stars for 1 of his elements to reach the perfected intermediate stage, and usually, people have to do twice the work as they would have 2 elements at that point.
Sora had it even worse because, on top of the 400 intermediate stars, he would need to complete his journey as an intermediate mage, He would need about 200 more basic stars to get his new elements to the intermediate level in the first place. As things stood, Sora had only 20 of the 4,200 basic stars that he was going to need to get all his elements to perfect all of his elements, and that does not include the extra 100 he would need to take himself from an Intermediate mage to an advanced one.
Taking an hour for every intermediate star to be fused means that those alone would take him 400 hours to make, roughly 16 and a half days to make if he did nothing but make stars without rest. Then he still had to make the 4,300 basic stars that he would be fusing manually as well taking roughly 2 hours on each one with his new technique. That is an extra 8,600 hours to complete. That is almost a full year it would take him to finish if he did nothing but cultivate every year without the need to eat, sleep, use the bathroom or rest his mind as a perfect machine without making a single error.
And this was what it looked like for someone like him with future knowledge and perfect technique. While your average age would have at most 2 elements at this stage, the key word here being average, and they would only have to make 2,100 stars as opposed to Sora. The average mage, after years of experience, often took upwards of a day to form a star, in some cases even two. And they were even more prone to errors than Sora was as he had a 90% hit rate for stars while most average mages would thank their lucky stars if they had even a 25% chance of consistently making stars, at least it would be a 1 in 4 chance and you could have your 10 basic stars at some point during the month.
Mind you, your average mage has to fund their magic lifestyle meaning that on top of the fact that they needed to fit to not doing anything for almost 2 days for a 1 in 4 chance on a lucky day into their busy 9 - 5, feeding themselves, sleeping so they can function, and whatever else their circumstances dictate they need. And this is only for tier 2 magic, the higher you get the more elements you have to feed and the more complicated magic gets. Not to mention that I didn't even tell you how long average people take to fuse the intermediate stars they need.
Ignoring the fact that you would take a week to fuse the initial 2 stars and a day to fuse the subsequent 8 stars each, they had an even more abysmal success rate for making Intermediate stars. And just like the basic stars, once you failed you lost everything, meaning that the initial 10 basic stars you used would be gone as well. Consider doing that 220 times on top of trying to progress your elements and fund the whole thing and you will understand just how much of a monster a man like Principal Momonga is.
Even students of academies like this one that hog geniuses and force them to do nothing but eat, sleep, and improve magic have such a low strike rate for Master Magicians at graduation that the Interstellar Magic Academy produces one every other year is considered to be a top 5 magic academy in the nation and is even rated as a good magic academy worldwide, often making it into top 15 and top 30 lists of magic academies in the world.
That even piles onto it, after graduation, students from these academies who are used to their sheltered lifestyles are suddenly thrown into situations where they can't just sit and cultivate anymore, some have military service, and some use their magic to get others to work, some try to get drafted in teams and make a living off of it.
Before they can even ask what happened a decade has passed and they haven't made even a quarter of the progress that they would have made in a quarter of a year back in their academy days. Especially because they are trying to make progress from fairly established ranks of Advanced or Profound mages that are even worse off to progress in than the intermediate level.
All in all, Sora might look like he has a load of work cut out for him, but even that amount is still more tame than the amount of work your average low-middle income household mage would have to do without copious amounts of talents, luck, resources, and insane levels of connections, which all by definition would no longer count them as average.
The fact that Sora doesn't need resources yet is a testament to his talent as most of his peers who are 'ahead' of him or keeping pace with him are being drenched in more resources than an average mage would even know what to do with, yet because of their talent even that much is not enough to thrive but only barely keep pace with a real genius.
Sora took a moment to think back to some of the families he had helped out in his previous lives and their stories of trying to support a mage in the household and how much of a physical, mental, and financial toll it took on the family as a whole and the world of pressure that was dropped on the mage in question's shoulders as the crippling weight of expectation pushes them to take otherwise unnecessary risks for the sake of progressing their magic fast enough for their supporters to see the investment being made as worth it.
Sora finished his meditation session at 9 in the evening and got up to stretch himself out and work out a bit since he was granted permission to finish his preparations here for the day, he spent the next 2 hours working out and the hour after that practising his form and various combinations for his sage series magic, duel or not he refused to lose a one on one fight to anyone in his class range.
Sora spent the night in Momonga's office to rest up before leaving the place at 5 in the morning as soon as he was up, he made his way through the otherwise empty school halls and back towards the male dorms to freshen up for the day. He quite enjoyed the scenery of the school when it was dark and made a mental note to add early morning runs to his workout routine when he was back from the divine tower.
He reckoned he would appreciate such a sentiment if it was recurring as even before his passing he always appreciated the little moments when he was alone with his thoughts and allowed to just exist without needing to pander to some big family's next request. Looking back, Sora couldn't help but feel that he wasted his time in the end, all of that pandering and making amends just for none of those so-called powerhouse families to see him as worth risking the reputation helped them earn to save him.
"I keep remembering annoying things these days" Sora said to himself as he got to the clearing that led to the male dorms just to find not 1, not 2, not even 3, but 5 male second-year students waiting on him in front of the dorm. From the looks of them, they were not Intermediate Mages, but they also weren't impossibly far off either. Sora sighed and decided to do this as quietly as he could.
"I assume you all are here to challenge me to a duel??", Sora asked outright just for none of the guys to respond, "You know it's really rude to ignore someone when they are spe-", before Sora could get his grievance out one of the guys shot a [Perfect] fireball at him which he sidestepped with relative ease. When he put his right foot down though, another one of the guys sent a [Perfect] Ice spread catching the foot in question and covering up to Sora's calf in ice.
Sora Cast his Thunder Stride-Dash and the lightning broke off the layer of Ice on his foot as he rushed between the fire and ice mages of the bunch and knocked them both out with a split kick that had all of the lightning he had used for the spell behind it. "It's even more rude to interrupt someone when they are speaking", Sora scolded as the three other mages backed away quickly to surround him. The 2nd year in front of Sora tried to blind him with [Perfect] Flash but Sora launched a Fire Fist-Flash at the ground to raise a cloud of dust that dispersed the light before twisting into a Fire Fist-Drive that blasted the third guy into the distance knocking him out as well.
Sora used Thunder Stride-Dash once more and rushed at one of the other two before they had the chance to complete their and winded them with a lightning powered back kick, transitioning into a tornado kick that had the rest of his spell's power behind it knocking that guy out as well. A [Perfect] Binding Vine was about to wrap around Sora's thigh when he burnt it away with a [Perfect] Precision fireball. Sora fired another one at the feet of his final assailant that blasted him backwards, winding him, and making him crash on his back violently without knocking him out.
"Now to find out what all of this nonsense is about", Sora said with an annoyed tone as he walked over to the guy who he picked to interrogate, he looked to be the weakest of the bunch so he might be able to mess around with his newer elements anyway. Maybe he could use the guy to test out some intermediate magic while he was at it. "Oh the plans I have for this one", Sora thought out loud as he grinned from ear to ear dragging the second-year student away from his dorm by the leg.