I thought it helped me but I spoke too soon. After a short while I was back in the annoying, long update loop.
During my google journey I found this: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/installation-failure-for-2023-10-cumulative-up...
It seems something was wrong with the early Oct update coming from MS.
While suggestions there didn't help me (dism rollback failed) it gave me an idea. I uninstalled all KBs applied to that system from Oct 2023. And then let the system be updated again. This did solve my problem.
I'm back on nvme disks, no more update loop. I tested it for two days, few other updates were successfully installed too.
