If EW was 5000 tomes per step instead of 2000 that wouldn’t have made the relic more interesting because you couldn’t get it immediately because tomes as a system are inherently uninteresting, it’s basically buying a relic weapon with Gil. It doesn’t make thematic sense nor does it “feel” fulfilling. You can argue I’m putting way too much stock on feeling but I mean the relics are useless anyway, if they don’t feel good what’s the point anyway.
I suggested a non RNG way (each relic requires guaranteed drops of shards of atma) but using tomes as a substitute for light (which I’ll remind you had RNG involved as well) to allow people to achieve it how they want is the exact argument they used for the EW relics