FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly "System.Runtime version=8.0.0.0"

I have been working on a .NET 8 project in Visual Studio for months. Everything was working well until one day out of nowhere, without changing anything in the code/OS/VS the project started throwing this exception whenever I try to run it:

Could not load file or assembly "System.Runtime version=8.0.0.0"

Here's what I've tried and hasn't worked:

• Reinstalling Visual Studio
• Reinstalling .NET
• Repairing .NET
• Restoring NuGet packages
• Deleting bin and obj folders from my project, cleaning and rebuilding the solution
• Cloning the repository again
• Manually reinstalled NuGet packages/dependencies
• Deleting NuGet cache
• Manually installed System.Runtime via NuGet (it wasn't previously installed but it used to work just fine)

Curiously enough, when I try to run the project in Rider instead of VS on a different machine, the project runs just fine. I have seen many people encounter this error online but none of their approaches worked for me.

The .sln has only one project whose .NET version is 8.