The dantian was cracking, and it was happening quicker than Raze had expected. It took him a big event like going against the Light Faction Elder to reach the third stage, and he thought it would be the same again for the fourth stage.
With a lack of crystals for energy and needing to split crystals between growing his magic core and dantian, it would take him longer to progress compared to others. This was expected. Although he had the potential to be stronger than the others, it took him twice as long and twice the amount of resources.
However, it seemed like the bottlenecks that were harder for those to break through might be different for each individual, and having already gone through a hard bottleneck before for himself, this was a lot easier.
We're kinda moving onto a new arc while placing a pin in the academy once this is all over the mian crux of the story will start to unvail!
mass release goals
1200 golden tickets = 1 extra chapter
1 castle gift and above = 1 extra chapter
3500 power stones = 1 extra chapter