Summoning

Description
The ability to take on Followers by establishing a Contract. Supplied with magic from the Summoner, Followers receive stats boosts, become telepathically linked to the Summoner, and can be Summoned anywhere within the Summoner’s magical range. A higher skill rank provides more Follower slots, greater stats boosts, and the ability to Contract with increasingly superior beings. At Rank S, the maximum number of Followers allowed is 10, and Followers get +100 to all stats, including HP and MP.

As long as the target is in consent, the Contract can be established by the Summoner at any time. The moment that happens, the individual will be transformed into a magical entity and assimilated into the Summoner's magic pool. Summoning can be used against not only monsters but also humans, elves, and even inorganic entities like golems.

Summoning Followers will expend MP and, as long as the Follower remains Summoned, lower the Summoner's Max MP. Unsummoning a Follower will restore the Max MP threshold but not recover MP. (ie. Followers cannot be Unsummoned in lieu of MP potions.)

Strategies

 * The telepathic link with the Summoner enables almost instantaneous communication and can be shared among all the Followers. Kelvin calls this his Follower Network, and it basically acts like a messaging app. There is group communication, private one-to-one communication, and it is apparently possible to upload information (such as Status details) and images (Melfina once uploaded a picture for Rion to draw out) to this Network.
 * In Kelvin's party, even those who aren't his Follower can be granted access to the Network as long as a clone of Clotho is on the person.
 * Followers can be Unsummoned even from great distances away. Sera was in the middle of exploring the new dungeon that had appeared within Clayworm Passages when she collapsed due to her Evolution, and Kelvin was able to Unsummon and re-Summon her to immediately bring her back home.
 * Tristan seems to be using this skill in tandem with a certain monster to achieve was seems like Teleportation, but this is yet to be clarified.

Trivia

 * Summoners are considered prodigies and are extremely rare in this world, to the point where there might be only one, if that, in each country.
 * The MP needed to Summon those with a class related to the gods is several dozen times more expensive than Summoning anything else.