If that’s the case, check all your /var/log/dnf*.log files and also the output of dnf history as well. I think you’ll find all the evidence there, that if dnf update was ran, then it will show exactly why it failed to update the packages - either because it didn’t download them, or something failed during the update.
Since you subsequently ran dnf update again, it installed the remaining packages that it either had problems with downloading the previous time you ran it or, as mentioned some error during the update that stopped remaining update package to be installed/updated. Therefore the log files should give you the reason why.
Please feel free to share all the logs here and we can see exactly why as well. Since as already mentioned, I’ve upgraded plenty of 9.4 systems without this issue - you say you had it every time with 10 updates. Which seems kind of strange to me that only you are experiencing this.
We can presume many things, but without evidence neither your viewpoint or ours can be proved otherwise.