By intuition he chose the right decision to take more sand, the monster for some reason chose to teleport them instead of attacking, by chance he doesnt die when shot in the head because of a rule, he was the only one not to complete his task but oh actually this area wants you to do the opposite so whoever didnt do the task actually wins, he won a 1/3 chance from dying and then miraculously, amaya shows up and gets on his side.
Of course everytime this stroke of luck happens, a lot of people die as collateral. Whatever happened to the akashic eye, huh