Macbook Pro dead slow after battery drain and update

Hi all

A1278 Macbook Pro, with 8GB or Ram and kingston SSD, High Sierra I believe.

The laptop ran out of battery a couple of days ago. After charge, it was very slow to do anything, the spinning beach ball was showing up litterally after every click. At some point it asked me to download and install updates. I approved and let it do its thing hoping it might fix things too.

After update, the system hang on the boot screen at the start of the progress bar for 12 hours with no progress.

I looked the problem up and reset the SMC. Rebooted and still the same.

I rebooted in safe mode and it has taken 9 hours to get to :

NOTE: administrator is creating non-ejectable disk image

I am not sure what to do, any advice is greatly appreciated.