No, that would not work well. From where should the PHP-script know, which datasets it should request? Should the script executing additional requests to know, which datasets to request? No, this is a task for the database system.

Well.

You know what is the # of your last shown entry .. then just start pulling entries from the next entry and get those entries one by one until your counter is again 25 and the stop.

And when you want next page it's just the same again. Get 25 from the next entry that is the last one shown in pagination.

I'm just juggling with this thought here and don't have any concrete. As said haven't been doing SQL in 20+ years and it shows, doesn't it? And even back then it was more like driving nails into my head ...

My logic might be completely incompatible with SQL which I remember from back then ...

This probably cannot be done and doesn't make sense as you said.