I don’t hate/dislike the character, but i’m just curious as how a grunt managed to survive for long or how he had the skill to even get promoted to ranger,
He is evidently good at surviving. He’s bigger than the average Unggoy, so that gives him an advantage over other members of his species. When sparring Sangheili, they apparently underestimated him and didn’t take him seriously. Yet while they’d wail away at him, he’s be able to resist their blows and then counter with powerful attacks of his own. Makes sense when you think about it, a lot of Unggoy have tough chitinous skin.
Basically, he’s just a survivor.
I mean, humans aren’t exactly the most resilient of creatures on the battlefield, but we still mostly survive to old age. Presumably, the vast majority of Grunts survived the war, it’s just that most of the ones we see in the games are up against a Spartan and get destroyed.
Stolt feels a lot like a joke character, especially when considering his feats.
That said its not that weird for him to have survived the war as lesser Unggoy have presumably survived the war too.
Stolt is very intelligent compared to the majority of his species and he is also stupidly large. The average grunt ranges from 138.4 to 167 centimetres, yet Stolt is described as coming up to the shoulders of an Elite making him rougly as tall as a Spartan 2.
Its this size and his intelligence that allowed him to best every single Elite he sparred with by using his large arms to block incoming attacks until his opponent got tired and then retaliated with his big meaty fists. Although it is very hard to believe that no Elite beat him in hand to hand considering the strength of Elites and the fact that Unggoy are never described as being particularly resilient.
During the war he wounded a Spartan to the point that he/she had to retreat, however no context is given for this fight so its hard to know how impressive this feat really is.
In the novel he is seen strangling a brute to death, however this scene seems surreal considering the strength depicted by the Brutes in Halo Wars 2 and other media which should have allowed said brute to rip Stolt of him and squash him.