What is at stake? That is one of the most important questions in doing a novel. You can invest an ample number of hours on your characters, world-building and other things related to your story. What is going to make your reader stay is you setting up precise information of what will happen if the MC loses and doesn’t defeat the antagonist.
You will use a lot of conflict situations throughout the novel. Man vs man. Man vs nature. Those and others. The most important thing is setting the stakes for the MC. It could be the end of the world. It could the MC losing his home. It can be the MC loses a promotion. Of course, it depends on the type of story you are developing. Right after the point of no return of the character, the MC should have more or less what can be on stake. So you can have a problem that pulls your character way into the problem that he/she/it can’t back out, and you show what can be the worst-case scenario.
So you will have your main problem with the story and you let your character know this is what will happen if you fail. On the Matrix, Neo has to become the savior of the Real World. This a: The Chosen One type of story. He has conflicts with the Matrix itself and with the agents. But he also has a conflict with himself on accepting the role of the chosen one.
You have to build up your plot in a way that obstacles are thrown to your character in order to reach from point A to point B. If there are no stakes. If There’s no conflict throughout. Your readers most likely put your story down and never look back. So make those stakes juicy enough and throw in some spicy obstacles for your story to be more palpable.