I know it takes 3 cycles to clear the entire area of hair, but what about thinning it out? Since you’re not removing it, does it only take one cycle to thin the hair?
If you want to have your hair thinned out in a way where the thinning is only visible during one time of the year, then you could do that with a few hours of work over a few weeks.
If you want to thin out the number of visible hairs seen all year, you need to do work to thin the visible hair in all hair growth phases you want to thin.