Indeed a strange behaviour from Asus…on a Z490 chipset.
I do believe it lacks an ME FW 14.1, besides cpu mcodes (A0671).
For further operations you need to be prepared and having full SPi IC(s) backups.
ME FW should be easy, but mcodes requires bios mod and here you can edit (HEX) directly a CAP or a current bios_region DUMP made with Intel FPT tool v14, adding it or replacing a present one, depends on volume space, the use of AMI MMtool can also be viable.
Now for flashing a CAP you need to follow guidance here, for FPT flash it needs FD unlocked, for bios region access read/write (usually write) and probably it will require another operation, the unlock itself.
Last resource, using a CH341 programmer.
All this is hypothetical, still needs preparation from user to fail and to recover.
Good luck