This sounds like a Systemd networkd issue, where boot is waiting for network interface prior to init.
What you need to do is to prevent waiting for interface.
Let's first try
systemctl disable systemd-networkd-wait-online.service
After running the above command, reboot and test. If it fails to work, then that means some other process is reenabling systemd-networkd online wait service (because that process relies on it), and you must mask the service instead of just disabling it.