You need to use a lighten up and use a little imagination.
There are many different ways that O-Chul could survive. The author chose to lean on the D&D rules, in order to get the result of allowing O-Chul to be a final living witness to Miko's last act. That is not cheating in a genre that presumes a certain degree of affection for the peculiarities of the rules -- quite the opposite.
As for the location, it does not really matter whether MitD trudged 0 feet, 20 feet, 200 feet, or 2000 feet to grab O-Chul and drag him back to his tea party. Some choices require more comic panel real estate than others. Some choices happen to be less funny than others.