It was pretty clear to her that side quests were probably based on roles. Such as repairing rides, assisting visitors, or completing objectives aligned with your role. So the real question was: what was the hidden objective? Well, considering the signs pointed to a cult, the answer might be obvious. It was to discover the cult or it was to help keep the carnival safe from the cultists. So far, she had gotten through a majority of her side quests and had a small percentage of the hidden objective. She used the slow hours to take breaks and explore, keep the ride operators and performers both hydrated and fed. As well as on the lookout for cultists. Everyone looked so innocent outside of player characters, so it was difficult, until a thought struck her. What if it wasn't the NPCs that were cultists but player characters! She had noticed that once you selected a role type, you couldn't back out. She had believed at the time that it meant that the other roles had been filled, but what if it was to keep people from discovering that visitors could mean normal carnival customers or cultists? She could use the system to check the players' progress bars, and so far, outside of herself and the performer players, as well as a couple of visitors, the other players were having major difficulty with their main objective, which meant it was different from theirs! She made it back to the food stand in time to complete rush hour and think, technically, by staying in the food stand area, she was safe since it was her role's Safe zone. The Performer's stage was their safe zone, but the real question was whether she could spot the player characters. It didn't take long for her to locate them since the NPC visitors all had solid or patterned colored clothes. Meanwhile, the Player characters that were visitors had stuff like band name shirts and things one normally wouldn't wear to a carnival. Now she had to mentally figure out which ones were cultists. She wished she could say it was hard, but during her usual run to take performers' food and drinks. She spotted a Player putting up a totem. She noticed the system told her "use the sticker in your pocket, to tag suspicious people!". It seemed cliche and more like a sort of in-the-moment thing, but it occurred to her that she hadn't ever actually seen suspicious behavior yet, so it was probably because she hadn't seen something like this in the act. She delivered the goods first before approaching him as he left the totem. She pretended to trip and fall into him so that she could tag him with the sticker without him noticing. After apologizing, she left for the food stand as he stormed off, pausing as he left. The moment he was gone, she cleaned up the totem. As she worked, she noticed security escorting the player character out of the carnival. Once he was tossed out, the hidden objective revealed itself to the player characters: "Kick 1/10 cultist out of the carnival". That was easier said than done. She kept her rounds up, making sure to deconstruct totems, remove the graffiti, and make sure the fire around the carnival was put out, every single time it got started. It became a sort of habit as she slowly helped catch 3 more cultists. The other player characters that weren't cultists were surprisingly helpful. Eventually, the hidden objective was complete, and with it, she returned to her "room," which, to her surprise, had some carnival prizes. It was easy to summarize that game instances could reward "cosmetics" and various prizes to players for winning.
She noticed she had enough game instance tokens to unlock the shop and upgrade her lobby. Not to mention, she could begin designing game instances. She upgraded her lobby to include her home, and apparently, her parents and siblings could log in to come visit her. She found that out as she stepped into her living room, only to get hugged. She couldn't help but break down crying as she missed them very much. Apparently, they had been watching her through the system, which, as much as it felt creepy, also made her cry as she realized she would be forced to watch them grow old without her. After they left, she made a game instance starting with the world-building. She built a whole theater with a section where you could play instruments or put on a play. She even added a fake audience that could be replaced with player characters using the audience role. She also created the musician, actor, designer, staff, and various other theater jobs as roles. She saved it since it seemed like she could work on it more later.