For anyone running into this same issue…
I was able to connect the installer USB and the boot drive to a different system and complete the installation there. However, even with Scale already installed I was having trouble with the system getting stuck during startup.
This time, I removed the IPMI card from the MB and connected the installer to one of the front panel USB ports and was able to reinstall Scale with no issues (yay).
After that, I discovered that whenever that IPMI card was connected, the system would get stuck during startup. So, the card is back in the box never to be used again and my NAS is running with no more issues.
From what i could gather, it looks like Scale has issues with the graphics processor in the IPMI card.