I need some help with a book idea I've been screwing around with.

For a while now, I've been toying around with this idea for a novel. The protagonist would be a guy around 29 or 30 years old, recently unemployed, single, living alone in a city apartment. He meets a magician, they become friends, magician shows him a whole new world where magic is a real thing and basically helps the guy get out of his slump and reinvigorate his lust for life, yadda yadda.

The problem is that I feel like the book needs a stronger conflict than "guy vs his disillusionment with life," because I'm afraid that's just too whiny and self absorbed. So what, the guy is in a slump. Join the club, right?

So I thought about adding in a mystery element. Another great magician from far away is murdered through magical means, a trio of investigator-type women sniff out the trail left by the killer and end up in the midst of the protagonist's newfound world, suspecting that the killer is a member of the local magicians or some shit. I dunno.

What I'm worried about is all that other stuff keeps taking me down a path that leads to magical bolts flying around in some kind of battle, and I don't want that stuff. I don't want this to be an action novel with harry potter fireballs splashing across the scenes.

I want it to be a more intimate story, that's really about a guy rediscovering the things that filled him with wonder when he was a kid, before the real world of adulthood stole it away from him. But I can't seem to figure out any other way of introducing the conflict that will drive the story. I don't want the guy the protagonist meets to turn into a backstabbing evil-doer or anything. I want him to be an honest friend.

Any thoughts?

Also, feel free to tell me if the whole thing just sounds unbelievably stupid to you. This would be my first novel though, so go easy on me. I'm not trying to make a living off writing books. I just feel like I have something that I want to explore and live through in my head while I write it.