The Run-Time

Slate is “VM-less”: the image contains the binary code that implements the primitives. A stub loader is used to launch the image.
Well, it will. It's currently hosted within a Lisp image which works in much the same way.
However, we still have and maintain a bytecode specification and implementation which can be used to generate a true standalone VM.
The real center of implementation is the compiler...

Slate is “VM-less”: the image contains the binary code that implements the primitives. A stub loader is used to launch the image.