Six months after the fight to the death with The Bog, Kaiji escapes from the underground and pays off his debts. Sakazaki gets fed up with Kaiji and tries to get rid of him by giving him 3 million yen as compensation. At that time, Kaiji is reunited with Miyoshi and Maeda, who were his friends in the underground, and they come up with a plan to swindle a large sum of money from Muraoka, the president of the underground casino where they work. Kaiji takes 3 million yen from Sakazaki, promising to pay it back, and plays a variant of mahjong called "17 Steps" invented by Muraoka.